


follow through

by speakingincode



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Tsukishima Kei-centric, different universities fic, extremely tsukishima kei-centric, tsukishima also works at a convenience store, tsukishima.... Copes, yamaguchi goes to tokyo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-05-21 13:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14916024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakingincode/pseuds/speakingincode
Summary: "They believed it pretty easily, didn't they?" Yamaguchi asks, an amused lilt in his voice as he untangles his arm from Tsukishima's. He looks at him, the smallest grin playing across his lips. "I guess it makes sense, though. Since, even if I did date someone, I'd care about you just as much. You're my best friend, you know?"Tsukishima rubs his arm and doesn't answer.Or: After their third year of high school, Yamaguchi leaves Tsukishima behind. Except he doesn't, not completely, and somehow, that only makes it worse.





	1. prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, thanks for checking out the fic! just wanted to give you a heads up: this part of the story rotates between the present and the past, but otherwise it's in chronological order. as in, the second scene in present tense directly follows the first scene in present tense, and the same goes for the scenes in past tense. it should be fairly easy to figure out, but just wanted you guys to know before you go in. the rest of the fic will be normal, so don't worry.
> 
> hope you enjoy the fic!

 prologue:

 

 

 

 

 

for the world to look this way [forever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3xvXqailhY)

 

 

 

♞ ♞ ♞  

Kei is sitting across from his mother when she lowers her chopsticks, leans forward, and starts to speak.

"How are you?"

Akiteru left yesterday. It doesn't really affect Kei when he comes and goes.

Of course he's years past avoiding him, past putting him on a pedestal and being angry he can't live up to it, but despite whatever bridges they mended during Kei's first year of high school, Akiteru's been far away for a long time. Kei doesn't mind his company, but he doesn't enjoy it so much that he'll start missing him when the way it is now is the way it's been for ages.

It's not the same for his mother. When Akiteru leaves, Kei can see the empty spaces in their house highlighted and reflected in the black of her pupils. Kei doesn't understand how she gets used to him being there so quickly, let alone why she lets herself. Akiteru's visits span weekends, maybe a week at the longest. He hasn't stayed for a significant amount of time since he was Kei's age, and yet...

Still. If anything, it should be Kei asking her that, not the other way around. She knows he's unaffected. She knows everything about him; it's bizarre that she's even asking him this. He sees her every day, after he wakes up, before he falls asleep. He hasn't gone anywhere, and she hasn't either. Nothing has changed.

Not recently, anyway.

"I'm fine," Kei says, thinking about forcing a smile, but the prospect is ridiculous. She wouldn't fall for it.

For another second he considers returning the question, but whatever she's doing, playing at small talk so suddenly, he can't bring himself to participate in it. Anyway, even if he asks and she decides to be honest and say something about Akiteru, Kei won't know how to reply. It's true she's never decided to confide in him that way, but she never says things that don't need to be said, either. The way she's acting now is strange, and he doesn't want to get caught up in it.

The ends of her mouth stretch upward, but even if the smile isn't forced, it's far from happy. "I'm glad," she says, but Kei can tell she barely is. Suppressing a sigh, he turns back down to the food in front of him.

Who is he kidding?

He knows why she asked.

 ♞ ♞ ♞ 

Yamaguchi swiped his hand through his hair for maybe the fourth time since they started speaking, the ghost of a smile across his face looking like it might fade at any second.

It was rare, seeing Yamaguchi act like this. Not even just around Kei.

Yamaguchi had grown out of his awkwardness years before, stopped being nervous and hesitating to say things to anyone. Even back then, Kei was acutely aware of this; he had to be, for all the times Yamaguchi took it upon himself to chide him for his negativity, all the times Yamaguchi teased him while grinning the kind of grin Kei could never manage to be genuinely irritated with.

Still, even if it was strange, Kei hadn't been paying attention. He'd asked an absent, "What's wrong?" any genuine concern the farthest thing from his mind. Kei can't remember what he was thinking about before Yamaguchi spoke, can only recall way the pink light of the sun played upon the line of freckles across Yamaguchi's nose.

But then Yamaguchi spoke, babbled an "I- I, uh..." and that should have made Kei notice that something was off, because Yamaguchi hadn't stuttered in years, but Kei didn't notice. Kei didn't notice, and then Yamaguchi said, "After the Interhigh, I'm... I'm quitting volleyball club."

The light had caught on Yamaguchi's hair, illuminated it in something like a halo. Kei remembers he'd been growing it out then, that sometimes he'd pull it back during practice or while he studied and forget to let it back down. He looked...  _different_ , that way.

It didn't last long. Before they started university, Yamaguchi had it cut.

"It's just... I'm not as smart as you, you know?" Yamaguchi flashed him a toothy smile, forced and strange to go along with his fumbling attempt to lighten the blow. "Not in the same way, at least. I love volleyball club, but I spend a lot of time there, and entrance exams are coming, and..."

Kei isn't sure what it was that finally got through to him. Maybe it was the insecurity barely masked behind Yamaguchi's words, the one Kei saw daily years ago, the one he never figured out how to react to. Or maybe it was simpler: Yamaguchi mentioning volleyball again - Kei had found himself more passionate about it than he'd ever been, back then - or college entrance exams, that reference to their future Kei had never heard his best friend discuss...

Or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe it was hearing Yamaguchi say the word "love." 

It doesn't matter. What matters is: For the first time that afternoon, Kei understood what Yamaguchi was trying to tell him, and everything cluttering his thoughts ( _the glow of freckled cheeks, halos encircling dark brown hair, the gentleness in the curve of pink lips_ ) evaporated.

Kei stopped walking.

He'd been so distracted by the light cast across Yamaguchi's face that he didn't even notice the sun was setting.

"Tsukki..." Yamaguchi said, stopping with Kei, "you're not... mad, are you? I- I'm sorry. I know I'm... a regular, and I... It's probably not convenient, and I can't imagine not going to club anymore, but..."

If Kei never replied to Yamaguchi, never acknowledged what he was saying, maybe it would stop being true. Like that cliché about trees in the forest.

Or- even if it didn't ( _because Kei knew that even if he pretended that he hadn't heard it, he_ had _, and that _cliché_ never made sense anyway_), from the way it was impossible for Yamaguchi to make his words coherent, the way his voice shook in a way Kei hadn't heard in years...

Maybe if Kei didn't say anything, Yamaguchi would talk himself out of it.

Ha. What an awful thought to entertain. Or.... all of it was awful. The swirling in his chest, the visceral  _wrong_  flooding his system... It was melodramatic at best and pathetic at worst.

Yamaguchi saying he was quitting a club - as much as the club mattered to Yamaguchi, as much as Kei could finally admit it mattered to him - wasn't something so world-shaking that it warranted the taste of iron inside his mouth.

Kei swallowed, and looked Yamaguchi in the face. "Don't be stupid. You don't need to apologize."

"Eh? I..." Yamaguchi bit his lip, the pout that had been growing on his face deepening in another direction. "Is it really... You don't... It's really... okay?"

It wasn't meaningless. One less regular for Karasuno, one less trick up their sleeve, one less giant part of Yamaguchi's life. It  _wasn't_  meaningless, but those things... weren't what Kei thought of when Yamaguchi told him. Even then, those things hadn't occurred to him.

What occurred to him was inane: practice, without Yamaguchi; training camp, without Yamaguchi; tournaments, without Yamaguchi. 

Inane, irrational, melodramatic,  _pathetic_. As if not seeing Yamaguchi for the hour or two a day they spent at volleyball practice, the hour or two they spent the majority of apart because they were  _practicing volleyball_ , meant the world was flipping on its axis. It's true Kei sometimes thought things about Yamaguchi that he'd never say out loud to him - though he wouldn't be Yamaguchi if he needed Kei to say them - things like best friend, or important, or matters more to him than most of everyone, but... right then, they were irrelevant.

The situation they were in, the conversation they were having - Kei knew it was far from losing Yamaguchi. Whatever changed, whatever happened, it wouldn't mean that he was gone. 

"It's fine, Yamaguchi," Kei reassured him before he realized what he was saying, some knee-jerk reaction to the vulnerability plain across his face, and then-

And then Yamaguchi smiled, and just in that moment, Kei believed the words he said.

♞ ♞ ♞

A rush of air blows into 1-Eleven as a girl pushes the door open too hard, curling her hands into fists when they reach her side.

Kei looks her over - hair dyed a too-yellow shade of blonde, eyelids thick with makeup, the ribbon around the collar of her uniform loose and lopsided - and promptly loses interest. He turns his gaze back to the magazine he'd been pretending to read, ignoring the soft intake of breath from the girl working the cashier next to him.

He's about to go back to studying the same close-up of an Amazonian butterfly he's been staring at for the past fifteen minutes when it starts: an incessant tapping coming from his left, a sound that would be drowned out by the easy listening songs on the store radio if it weren't for the fact that it was right  _next_  to him. Kei exhales.

His coworker's habit isn't something new; he's shared most of his shifts with her since he started working at the 1-Eleven, and she does it whenever she gets restless or apprehensive: when the store's been empty for fifteen minutes and she's debating between staying behind the counter or cleaning something in the store that doesn't need cleaning, when a group of rowdy teenage boys invade the store. 

Still, often as he's heard it, it's not an easy sound to miss. Out of the corner of his eye, he glances at his co-worker and follows her gaze to their new customer. She's where she's been since she arrived: standing in front of their selection of pre-made lunches, crossing her arms and making faces at them.

Kei holds back a sigh. He'd known his coworker was the overly anxious type, but he thought something actually happened. Some girl loitering around their refrigerator in a mood wasn't worth his time. It wasn't even worth her time.

A part of him - the part of him that was nursed during high school, maybe middle school - says he should say something to her to calm her down, but he shrugs it off. He speaks to her so rarely that she'd probably be more put off by that than anything.

His eyes glaze over his magazine as the tapping next to him grows faster and louder and then - sudden silence, the shuffling of uneven steps on the convenience store floor, and "Can I help you?" Without turning his head, Kei looks up.

The girl wrinkles her nose and raises an eyebrow - a little condescendingly, Kei notices. From her demeanor since she walked in, Kei expects her to fire back some hotheaded retort, something like "Why would I need your help?" or "Leave me alone," but she only shakes her head and looks away, brushing her off like the minute of her time she took was too much wasted. 

His coworker opens her mouth, looks at her for a second, and then closes it. Kei waits for her to come back behind the register wearing that semi-embarrassed face she always does, the one she had that time she'd knocked a pack of cigarettes off a shelf and onto his shoulder after she'd tried to reach them on her own instead of asking him for help.

But she doesn't; instead she picks up a rag and ducks behind the coffee machine, wiping down the counters she'd wiped down forty minutes earlier. All the while, she shoots nervous glances at the girl an aisle away from her, probably still worried about whatever it was she was worried about.

They stay like that, the blonde girl staring down lunchboxes, his coworker wiping the clean counter down far too thoroughly, and Kei starting to lose interest in whatever idiocy they're partaking in, until the girl finally picks something and wanders over to the coffee machine.

Kei watches his coworker go stiff just slightly and turn away from her before she notices her glances, and then the girl reaches over to make coffee and-

"You shouldn't," his coworker says, too loudly, and even as the girl turns the hard look in her eyes her way, she doesn't back down, no longer moving the rag in her hands and turning to face her.

The girl continues her borderline-glare, her mouth twisting slightly. "It's... broken?" she asks, annoyed disbelief dripping from her words.

"It's six," she explains, her voice stilted like she's tripping over her words but they're still loud, for no reason. "You shouldn't- You shouldn't have coffee this late in the day. It's not- healthy."

The girl looks at her like she has seven heads and doesn't answer for far too long, but his coworker still doesn't back down. They stare at each other until she finally says, "Why're you  _botherin'_  me? Fuckin' weirdo." Kei watches as his coworker's lips curve downward for just a second, as she turns back to the counter and the girl makes her coffee, pushing past her to get the milk and sugar, and heads his way to pay.

When she's gone, the door closes too loudly and his coworker comes back behind the register, and he can read the embarrassment on her face, inexpressive as she is. For a second, he thinks about asking what he'd just witnessed, why she'd been so strange when he'd never seen her that awkward or inept before, but he doesn't. 

Nothing interesting happens for the rest of his shift.

♞ ♞ ♞ 

It was Saturday night, and Yamaguchi was making fun of Kei for complaining that the dinosaurs in the new  _Jurassic Park_ movie weren't feathered.

Something about taking it too seriously and getting worked up about things that didn't matter. Kei didn't think he was taking it too seriously, for the amount of money that was poured into a film like that, and he wouldn't say he was getting worked up (though even if he was, it was hard to not get irritated when the film you were watching was two hours long) but sometimes, when Yamaguchi laughed, there was something in it that made Kei not want to argue.

Actually, Kei was surprised Yamaguchi didn't fall asleep during the movie.

Around that time, he'd been tired constantly. It was more than a while after Yamaguchi had quit volleyball, but he'd only replaced it with cram school, and cram school wore him out more. Yamaguchi was at his house only about half the amount of time he was before, and Kei couldn't miss the darkening under his eyes, or how much more he yawned and spaced out. 

In another situation, Kei might have worried, and maybe there were things he should have worried about, but Yamaguchi never stopped being Yamaguchi. He still laughed, still smiled, only complained about studying jokingly and pumped his fist every time he did well on a test. He was the same Yamaguchi he was after practice went on too long, after they won a game they'd been thinking about for months. He'd just set his sights in another direction.

If he was still himself, Kei didn't care about what direction he was looking.

It wasn't as if he disappeared, anyway.

Their routine had adjusted, with Kei changing his route home after practice so it would stop by Yamaguchi's cram school and Yamaguchi having to get permission to attend their official matches as a pseudo-manager, but it  _adjusted_. It didn't disappear.

Back then, sometimes Kei would think to himself how stupid he was to think Yamaguchi could disappear. To waste his time worrying about something like that.

Even now, he knows the thought is stupid. Still...

"Well, it wasn't as good as the first three," Yamaguchi said as he stretched exaggeratedly, turning his head away from Kei to hide the grin that he could see anyway, "so I guess it's okay you complained through the whole thing."

Whenever Yamaguchi watched a movie with Kei and Kei made a snarky comment, Yamaguchi laughed, even if he also usually said something like "What are you talking about?" or "Get over it, Tsukki." Yamaguchi laughing at the things he said went for most things, actually, though in real life, those laughs were more often hidden and accompanied with "Eh, Tsukki, don't be mean!"

Even without the smile, Kei would know he was joking. Still, there was something to be said about how comfortable he'd gotten making fun of him...

"Did you watch the first three movies?" Kei asked, his words dripping the kind of sarcasm that would have offended anyone other than Yamaguchi. "From what I remember, you were hiding your face behind your hands the whole time." 

The vast majority of the time, at least. They'd watched those movies years ago, far before they'd been ingrained in each other's lives the way they were then, but Kei remembers it.

Sitting next to Yamaguchi as he hid his face and clutched Kei's shirt when he could summon the courage to face the screen, like it somehow made him safer. Looking at Yamaguchi and thinking about how small he was.

( _how small he isn't, now-_ )

Yamaguchi's face broke out into a full-fledged smile, and he started to laugh, elbowing Kei's side far too weakly. Kei wondered if quitting practice started to affect him. "I was  _eleven,_ Tsukki! You're really bringing that up? I can't believe you remember it!" 

Eleven, Kei thought, was still too old to be scared of movie like  _Jurassic Park_ , but he didn't say anything.

He'd been there for when Yamaguchi was like that, too scared of everything. Thinking about all the fears and insecurities he used to have seemed so  _pointless_ when Yamaguchi was there, sitting next to him, so vastly different from the Yamaguchi from so long ago that sometimes Kei forgot they were the same person.

Or... maybe that wasn't the right way to put it. "It's hard to forget someone holding on to your shirt for six hours straight, you know. Even if you still do that now," Kei retorted, thinking about the time Yachi had dragged all of them to see a mediocre horror movie she'd been excited about.

Yamaguchi no longer looked away or closed his eyes anymore, just clutched Kei's sleeve in a vice grip whenever the movie was too intense, but it annoyed Kei the same way it had years earlier. The same way it had been endearing, too. Kei wouldn't have liked the movie anyway, so...

Yamaguchi laughed again, jabbing Kei with his elbow harder (Kei decided he hadn't let himself go after all) and sticking his lip out in an exaggerated pout. "Eh, but those are really scary movies!"

It was barely a comeback, but Kei didn't say anything, just watched Yamaguchi shaking with laughter and his stupid pout until he gave up on it and flashed Kei a smile.

Thinking on it, Kei must have been smiling back at him, because Kei can't imagine himself being able to hide the way he'd felt then, but he can't remember, and then the moment passed.

It didn't disappear; that odd sense of serenity lingered in the air, even as Yamaguchi breathed out and the laughter subsided, even as he turned away from Kei to glance at the television screen that had gone dark while they were too distracted to notice. But the silence around them became the kind you could hear.

"Tsukki... when we graduate, what are you going to do?"

It's funny, that he'd phrased it like that. Kei still remembers.  _What are you going to do?_ Like he knew, even back then. Or he suspected, but he didn't want it to be true. Not that... it's even that bad now. Or bad at all. It's...

"I haven't thought that much about it," Kei had replied then, which was true only because he hadn't wanted to think about it, especially not when he was with Yamaguchi, especially not during moments like these. But he hadn't needed to think about it; he was majoring in accounting because he could get a job in accounting, and he was going to the local university because it meant he didn't have to leave. 

( _"Are you sure? With grades like these, if you buckled down and worked at it, you could even try for Todai. Somewhere better than there, anyway. It's a waste."_ )

Kei squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. If Yamaguchi noticed, he didn't bring any attention to it.

"Really?" Yamaguchi replied, a twinge of  _something_  in his voice that Kei instantly knew he shouldn't entertain. "I'm... I'm gonna try to go to Tokyo!"

Those words didn't affect Kei as much as they should have, because Kei already knew them. Because Yamaguchi was smart even when he didn't study. Because Yamaguchi could get into the local university in his sleep.

And Kei  _knew_  that, and he'd known that since that day they walked home together and Yamaguchi told him before anyone else that he was going to quit volleyball. But Yamaguchi hadn't left, and he was still there then, and if Yamaguchi was there Kei didn't see the point in thinking about later, and...

"Actually, I..." Yamaguchi brushed a strand of hair behind his ear, a nervous, unnatural sort of smile on his lips. "I wasn't going to, because I didn't want to leave my mom alone, but I told her, and she said... I was being stupid. Because she hadn't worked so hard so I could throw away my future while thinking I was doing it for her. She..."

He turned to look Kei in the eye and laughed, a little reluctantly.

"She said that. That's... That's why I've been studying all this time."

Kei thought about Yamaguchi's mother, the woman he'd spent maybe a handful of days with for all the years he'd known Yamaguchi.

Kei thought about Yamaguchi feeling guilty about leaving her alone, thought about all the times she didn't care about leaving Yamaguchi alone. The countless nights he spent at Kei's house because he didn't want to stay in an empty apartment. The nights when they were young when Kei could hear Yamaguchi crying in his futon even though he pretended he couldn't.

Kei thought about Yamaguchi feeling guilty about leaving her alone.

"But... you don't know what you'll do, Tsukki?" Yamaguchi asked, and Kei could hear what he was thinking.

If Kei didn't know where he wanted to go, then there was nothing stopping him from coming with him. Kei wondered if he really believed that. If he really thought Kei could follow him out of their hometown and the way things were then and the way things had always been would be the way things would always be.

Well, even if Yamaguchi had found some way to convince himself those things could be true, it wasn't as if Kei was in a position to criticize. Even if it was stupid, and maybe all that time Yamaguchi spent at cram school was wasted if he could believe that lie for even a second. Like Kei's future was something that could be decided on Yamaguchi's whim. 

"I'm going to the local university," Kei finally said, tearing his gaze from Yamaguchi and the look in his eyes. 

"O-Oh," Yamaguchi had replied, probably involuntarily, and even as Kei couldn't bring himself to look at Yamaguchi, he could feel the air shift. The way he broke Yamaguchi's heart with six words. Kei wondered if Yamaguchi ever felt that from him.

Melodramatic. Kei's heart wasn't broken.

"That's... It probably... would've been bad if you still didn't know what you were going to do, right?" Yamaguchi forced a laugh. "I shouldn't have thought... yeah..."

Yamaguchi was apologizing for believing a lie, babbling the worst kind of nonsense.

Kei couldn't stand to look at him. Something was swirling in his chest, something black that tasted like guilt, but it  _shouldn't_  have been.

Why was Yamaguchi acting like this? Voice shaking, speaking nonsense, whatever face he was making... Why the hell was Yamaguchi sad? Where did Yamaguchi get off being sad when he was the one who was  _leaving_?

Kei thought about Yamaguchi's mother. Kei thought about guilt, about how he'd felt so bad about wanting to leave that he confessed it to her like a sin. Kei wondered what would have happened if she asked him to stay.

Kei wondered what would happen if he asked him to stay.

It was funny, because there were so many things about that prospect that should have made Kei angry.

How presumptuous it was that Yamaguchi felt guilty for wanting to go to university in a different city from his because- because what? Because he thought he  _needed_  him? Because he thought he'd fall apart without him?  And that there was a part of him that didn't mind that disgusting sort of pity, some pathetic part that would reach out and accept it and beg him for more, but... 

Nothing like that crossed his mind.

Maybe it's because Yamaguchi was right, Kei thinks now. Maybe it was because in that moment, Kei knew what it was like to have Yamaguchi next to him, Kei thought then.

Need... Kei's always had problems with "need," but even then, he was far past pretending Yamaguchi didn't matter. That he wasn't happy when he was with him, that he wasn't his best friend. And maybe, just in that moment, that was enough to make Kei not mind the idea of begging.

Still, an idea was just an idea, and whatever was on Kei's mind when he finally brought himself to look Yamaguchi in the eyes, it didn't stay there. He still doesn't know what he thought would happen, what would have happened if Yamaguchi's face hadn't looked like  _that_  when he finally saw him, but in the end, that was what would have happened.

What would have happened doesn't matter.

What happened was that Yamaguchi's eyes had begun to sparkle, his bottom lip quivering, and his gaze was fixed on the floor because he didn't want Kei to see him, either. What happened was that Kei realized how long it had been since either of them spoke, how long it had been since Kei really thought about the way Yamaguchi felt.

What happened was that Kei pulled Yamaguchi into his chest (and his shirt got wet, but he couldn't bring himself to mind it) and said his name.

Kei heard him the pause in his heavy breathing and felt a choked-out "Huh?" muffled against his chest.

Kei thought about telling him to stop crying, that it was pointless or not worth it or  _something_ , thought about how he learned in grade school that that never worked with Yamaguchi. Kei sucked in a breath, and then started to speak.

"Even if you go to Tokyo, you're still Yamaguchi, and I'm still Tsukishima. Wherever you go, it doesn't matter."

Kei didn't know if his words got across what he was trying to say, didn't even know if he believed what he was trying to say. But before he had time to think about it, Yamaguchi wrestled himself out of Kei's arms, looked him in the eye and smiled, just slightly, even though he started sobbing again in a second.

That smile, and Yamaguchi resting his arms on Kei's shoulders after that, and then pulling him in -- Kei realized that Yamaguchi understood what he was trying to say ( _wherever we go, you're my best friend, and I'm yours_ ) and Kei realized that Yamaguchi believed it.

Sitting there, the heat of Yamaguchi's wet cheeks on the base of his neck, Kei thought to himself that maybe if Yamaguchi believed the words he said, it was enough.

♞ ♞ ♞  

Kei taps his fingers on his desk, stares at the blank blackboard, and wonders why he ever got in the habit of coming to class early. 

There's a melodramatic rock song blaring through his headphones, about love and space and something else Kei can't be bothered to think about at nine in the morning. For a minute, Kei entertains the idea of turning it off, but he said he'd listen to the album and it's livelier than listening to the same thing he does every day.

Kei picks up the book on his desk, some pretentious novel drowning in convoluted metaphors and thick, unreadable prose that Kei had slogged through the night before. He thinks about reading ahead since he's early anyway, but after opening the book and glancing at a page, he closes it just as fast. Kei lays the novel back down on his desk and sighs.  

He leans back in his chair and glances around the classroom, notes the students he recognizes and the ones he never sees this early in the morning. 

On the other side of the room is a girl who always shows up before him, the kind of person who raises her hand for every question and beelines to the professor after class ends. One time, when Kei was so early the only people in the classroom were him and her, she started talking to Kei about an assignment and then lost interest and went back to watching videos on her phone.

A couple of rows below him, right at the front by the professor's desk, is a boy who tends to come five minutes after Kei, who's eternally finishing an assignment, a tablet and notebook for something that looks like physics sprawled out on his desk.

There's chatter coming from Kei's right, and he realizes that his cell phone has been silent for a while. He's about to pick it up when there's a clap on his shoulder and he hears, "Morning, Tsukishima-kun!"

Kei turns around and suppresses a sigh when he recognizes the person addressing him, laments the fact that he's never had any sense of personal space.

The boy slides into the seat next to him, grinning a grin too comfortable and lazy for how early in the day it is. "Good morning," Kei replies, unplugging his headphones and putting them away. If Kei kept them on, he'd just complain the way he always does until he takes them off.

He reaches across the table for the novel sitting in front of Kei and flips through it, not really looking at the pages. "Man, did you do the reading?"

"It's due," Kei answers, thinking about trying to take the book back but deciding it isn't worth the effort.

The boy scrunches his nose at him and puts it back down in front of him, leaning forward. "I did it, too, but I didn't get it," he says, looking at Kei expectantly.

Kei sighs. He does this constantly, acting like Kei's smart enough to explain anything to he doesn't understand to him. Other than his glasses, he doesn't know where he got the idea he's intelligent. "I didn't either," he replies, which is mostly true.

The boy frowns at him and then loses interest after Kei doesn't react. As Kei watches him dig through his bag, he thinks about rolling his eyes.

That entire exchange, like all the exchanges that go this way with him, was too easy. Kei doesn't know why he acts this way, the immediate casual language, the way he hangs an arm off the side of Kei's shoulder just to annoy him, asking him for help... Kei doesn't think he's actually stupid, though there are times he tests that.

He went to Shiratorizawa. Kei asked him how he ended up at their university (he'd reacted with "You're really talking about our school like that, huh?") and he told him something about how after he'd gotten into Shiratorizawa, he'd never adjusted, only skated by to the point where their school was the best he could get into.

Which wasn't  _bad_ , he'd made the point to tell Kei. You should really start looking at things differently.

Telling Kei something like that, the unsolicited advice notwithstanding, after knowing him for all of a week, he seemed like the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. But Kei felt uneasy about believing that.

"Hey," Kei hears next to him, effectively killing his train of thought. "I didn't see you at volleyball club."

Kei sighs. He feels like they have the same conversation every time he sees him, but he can't bring himself to care enough to tell him to leave him alone.

Still, the way he brings it up when he thinks Kei isn't paying attention, like he might reflexively say he'll come next time... Isn't he supposed to think he's smart? "I'm not in volleyball club."

He waves a hand at Kei, like the point he made is irrelevant. "You should be, though. If we had someone like you in the club, it might have little more direction. We tried to play three-on-three the other day and it was so disorganized we just ended up playing 'keep the ball in the air' for an hour," he says, a trace of uncharacteristic annoyance in his voice.

If he's annoyed, Kei thinks, it's definitely karma. But he's heard that tone from him before; Kei doesn't know why he doesn't just give up on their volleyball club.

Kei also isn't sure how he thinks his venting is helping motivate him to join their club, but if that's their school's volleyball club, he probably doesn't have anyone else who'd understand him. He talks so much about volleyball when he sees him that Kei doesn't think he talks about it anywhere else, anyway.

Even the day they'd met, he'd spotted him from across the classroom and got up to sit next to him, greeted him with "Hey, you're that tall guy from Karasuno, aren't you? I used to watch your team beat my team!"

He'd talked his ear off about volleyball, how he'd gone to Shiratorizawa but was never good enough to make the team and how he was planning on joining their volleyball club even though he heard it was a little sad. How  _Kei_  should join, too, because he was so good at the game and it would be so cool to play with him! He'd laid it on thick, but it wasn't for nothing.

Kei thought about it, for a while. Kei always had the headboard of the basketball hoop behind his house, but not playing real volleyball so long left him feeling strange and thinking he wouldn't be playing it again made it worse.

That day he'd spoken to him, Kei made a point to stop at the huge bulletin boards he passed on the way to class and hunted down the volleyball club flyer. It took him a while, but he found it, plain and half-obscured by an advertisement for tutoring. As he noted the time and location of the first meeting, Kei thought about things staying the same.

And then the day of the club's first meeting came, and Kei stood outside the door of the gym, saw the faces he didn't recognize, the court that for some reason felt so viscerally different from the one at Karasuno.

He thought about the person who wasn't standing next to him and realized what staying the same meant.

Well, not that it matters now. He glances at the person next to him and his furrowed eyebrows.

"I'm sure that's some kind of receiving drill," Kei says in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, and the boy lets out a laugh, at least partially forced.

"Yeah, sure. If you're gonna say stuff like that, they'd love you in the club, you know?" He rubs his neck and makes a face. Kei doesn't reply. "Oh, come on, Tsukishima-kun. Just once. Or... I'd prefer more than once, but if you came once, you could probably help them figure out how the game works, and we could do  _something.._."

His tone is rapidly growing more annoyed, and Kei's about to figure out what to say so his comment doesn't devolve into a rant.

Before he can think of anything, a cough comes from the front of the room, and their professor starts the class. By the time the period is over, he's smiling at him lazily, whatever frustration he'd been feeling about the club gone.

"So, none of that made sense, right?" he says, nudging Kei with his elbow.

Kei stands up and slings his bag over his shoulder. "Nothing about this class makes sense," he replies, and the boy next him laughs, standing up as well.

"You really aren't a humanities guy, huh," he replies, genuinely chipper as he pats his shoulder and walks out of class with him. 

It isn't quite true; Kei breezed his way through Japanese in high school and never minded history even if he didn't have any particular interest in it, but he has no patience for what they've been reading.

If someone's being deliberately difficult to understand, he doesn't see the point of spending time trying to figure them out. It's energy better spent elsewhere. Kei thinks about explaining this to him, but before he can say anything, he hears someone call "Jin!" in the crowded hallway, and he's already looking somewhere else.

"Hey, Ozaki!" he replies, waving at someone Kei can't make out. He turns to look at him. "I gotta go. I'll see you at volleyball, though, okay? Four today, the gym next to the liberal studies building. I'll see you!"

On the way back to the train station, Kei listens to the album he'd listened to earlier and decides it sounds better the second time.

♞ ♞ ♞   

They were at Nationals, and the last quarterfinal match turned out 25-27 for Karasuno.

There was a way Kei started playing volleyball sometime in his second year, where he spent every second on the court so immersed in the game, so hyper-aware of every movement that by the time a match ended, he'd be so drained the only thing he could recall was the feeling.

In the long run, what he remembered didn't matter. Coach Ukai pored over the tapes after each game and told them what to improve on, and if they lost, Kei would end up watching it with Kageyama and Hinata anyway - and Yamaguchi, when he was still on the team.

When Yamaguchi left, he fell out of that level of concentration, just for a while and just a little bit. But everyone seemed to notice; even Kageyama took him aside, told him he knew he was adjusting to Yamaguchi quitting but he needed to get himself together sooner or later.

The whole affair was strangely tactful, for Kageyama. Sometime after he became captain he probably had to get used to that kind of thing (Kei would've supported Yamaguchi, but he'd vehemently rejected the idea when Kei suggested it, and he found out why), but seeing Kageyama act that way to him irritated Kei so much that he made sure Kageyama left the conversation equally pissed.

Yamaguchi found out about that exchange too quickly. Kei had suspected it was Yachi at first, but he knew she was too considerate to tell Yamaguchi about those things and he also knew an orange-haired loudmouth who never thought before he spoke.

A little sneaky, that he'd gotten it out of Hinata, but Tsukishima knew it was just as likely that he'd gone to talk to him and Hinata blurted out something like "Tsukishima's been awful at practice lately!"

Yamaguchi brought it up on the walk home from Yamaguchi's cram school, in a clumsy segue from the mundane comments Yamaguchi always made when he met him at the entrance. He'd been talking about how boring cram school was and how much studying he always had to do and then suddenly: "How's volleyball club going for you?"

Yamaguchi was so transparent Kei couldn't even get irritated for what he was trying to ask him. "You don't need to worry about it, Yamaguchi," Kei replied, because Yamaguchi wouldn't be asking that question with that tone of voice if he didn't already know the answer.

Yamaguchi bit his lip and said, "Okay, Tsukki," sounding like he would let the matter rest there, reluctant as he was. But a little after that, Kei is almost certain, he talked to Coach Ukai about attending their games.

For a minute, the tension in the air threatened to grow into uncomfortable silence, and then Yamaguchi nudged him and said, "Eh, but I heard you fought with Kageyama! You shouldn't do that! You know he's the captain. What if he takes you off the starting lineup?" 

Kei forced a grin and replied, "He couldn't even if he wanted to. He needs me too much." 

Yamaguchi was only joking, and Kei knew Kageyama, who put volleyball before everything to the point that Kei'd watched it cause havoc in his personal relationships, wasn't anywhere near petty enough to take him off the starting lineup for an argument. Still, even as he said it, he wondered how much it was true. Wondered if Kageyama would take him off if he got worse. 

But before he could continue that train of thought, Yamaguchi laughed and said, "I know."

Eventually, Kei got better, and every mistake he made didn't ring throughout his mind after a game ended.

The entire thing wasn't much of a situation, and volleyball was as much a constant for him as Yamaguchi. The stress and anxieties Kei didn't want to channel into Yamaguchi, the ones he'd never put on other people anyway, he channeled into volleyball, practicing nonstop for the one thing he still took wholehearted pride in.

And all of it - the drills, the nights in his backyard Yamaguchi was too busy to spend with him, the practice matches he'd given his all in - led him there: standing on the court after the last whistle was blown on quarterfinal match, covered in sweat while his legs threatened to give out from sheer exhaustion, the scoreboard reading 25-27.

More than half a year later, Kei barely remembers that game. A couple of blocks, one or two impressive spikes from Hinata and Kageyama, a coordinated group attack.

If he was still in high school, he might be able to recall more, but everything about those moments, steeped in rules and calculation and the best way to kill their momentum, is so far away from Kei's life now that it's hard to see it as more than a blur. But even if he doesn't remember the intricacies of the match, he doesn't think he'll ever forget that day. That feeling.

Turning around after they'd finished bowing, everyone patting each other on the back and Kageyama looking like he was on the verge of tears, and then seeing Yamaguchi on the sidelines, rushing at him after they caught eyes.

"Tsukki! You were- You were so cool!"

They lost the match after that, and for the first time Kei cried with everyone else, but even so, Kei doesn't think about that day anymore, doesn't even regret it.

It's the quarterfinals that haunt him: overcome with that pure sense of exhaustion, the undeniable pride when he looked at the scoreboard. The feeling that flooded his chest at the sight of Yamaguchi, so starry-eyed and awestruck that he couldn't even tease. 

That kind of euphoria... Kei hasn't felt it for a long time.

♞ ♞ ♞ 

"Eh, you really listened to it?" Yamaguchi asks, the smallest grin overtaking his face. "Did you like it?"

"It was fine," Kei replies, turning away from the laptop screen to adjust the microphone on his desk.

He'd gotten it with Yamaguchi before he left; Yamaguchi said something about how he'd end up picking the wrong type (completely baselessly) but Kei thinks he just wanted them to have the same one. He's always liked things like that, since they were kids.

"You shouldn't be so surprised I listened to it. I told you I would."

Yamaguchi laughs a little wearily and rubs his neck. "I was surprised when you said that, too. But I'm glad you like it!" he says, even though Kei never said anything like that. Kei hears the fatigue in his voice and lets it go.

"You sound tired," he points out. "If you're so worn out after work, you should just go to sleep instead of calling. We can talk tomorrow, you know. It isn't a big deal."

Sunday morning instead of Saturday night makes more sense, anyway. 

But Kei knows it's partially his fault, since he doesn't like doing things like this without knowing in advance, but Yamaguchi shouldn't be on the verge of passing out just to accommodate him. Even skipping the call every now and then would be fine, because just these conversations and Yamaguchi's onslaught of daily texts are enough for Kei to know he's busy, but Yamaguchi would never go for that.

Kei doesn't like to think about why.

Yamaguchi's eyes widen when Kei speaks, and he leans forward almost immediately. "Eh, don't hang up, Tsukki!" he says, fiddling with his keyboard in some newfound burst of energy emerging from his misplaced worry.

Kei wonders if he's trying to find some way to stop him from hanging up on his end. He's never been that great with technology. 

"I'm not going to," he says, even though he knows he probably should, and Yamaguchi backs up from the camera.

"I'm glad you're worried about me, but you don't need to be," Yamaguchi says, smiling a little smugly and then breathing out and rubbing his neck after a moment passes. "I was looking forward to talking to you all day, you know?"

Kei doesn't answer, and after the silence goes on too long, Yamaguchi exhales again.

"Well... it's not work, anyway. Or... the restaurant can be kind of tiring and city people are a little mean, but it's fine. It's just... the whole city, you know? I'm happy I came, but everything is so fast here. It still gets kind of overwhelming, even though it's been months. Sometimes I miss when we used to just lie around your house after school." 

Out of the corner of his eye, Kei sees Yamaguchi brush a strand of hair behind his ear.

He tries to come up with something to say, knows he has to say something because this is the first time since he went to Tokyo that Yamaguchi's saying this kind of thing to him ( _the kind of thing he used to say to him when they were alone at his house and it was sixteen minutes to midnight_ ) but then Yamaguchi isn't paying attention to him anymore.

"I'm talking to Tsukki," he says, looking away from the screen. "Do you want to say hi to him?"

"Oh, uh, hi, Tsukishima-kun," Kei hears, and he sees Yachi duck into view, clad in an oversized t-shirt, a towel wrapped around her head. He responds in kind and Yachi goes back offscreen. "Hinata's coming over in an hour."

Yamaguchi scrunches his nose, the corners of his mouth turning downwards. "He came over a couple days ago!"

"Kageyama-kun kicked him out for being annoying again," Kei hears Yachi say in a similar tone. "I just wanted to tell you. Uh, nice to see you, Tsukishima-kun!"

Kei waves at the screen and then looks at Yamaguchi. The tension from earlier has completely gone away, and he wonders if he should mention what he said. Instead he says, "Sounds like you'll be busy."

"I don't know why Kageyama agreed to live with him if he kicks him out every other day," Yamaguchi says. "Eh, but whatever. I told you enough about what's going on here. Yacchan can deal with Hinata since she didn't say no, anyway. How are you, Tsukki? You never tell me anything when we text." 

There's a joking pout on his face, but it's not like Yamaguchi leaves much of an opening for that kind of thing. Most of his texts are things like  _look i saw this guy with a snake!!!_  and a picture of a man with a snake or  _TSUKKI THEIR NEW ALBUM IS SO GOOD_ or videos of cats being mean to each other and  _this reminded me of you ^o^_. But Kei has to concede that he has something of a point.

"Akiteru visited last Friday," he decides on saying after being silent for a minute.

Yamaguchi's eyes widen as a grin takes over his face. "Really? You should've told me he was coming so I could come, too!"

It's the reaction Kei expected. Yamaguchi's always been fond of Akiteru, since they were kids and Akiteru always took Yamaguchi's side whenever he overheard him trying to annoy Kei into doing something. He thinks Yamaguchi even kept talking to him during that period of time Kei refused to acknowledge him. Still, close as they are...

"You were here three weeks ago," Kei points out.

And Yamaguchi never says it, but Kei can tell the visits take a toll on him. The train ride isn't so bad, but doing it twice in the space of a weekend, plus all the other things he does, it's too much of a trip to make often. 

Yamaguchi makes a face at Kei and then grins. "How was it, though? Did you have fun?"

( _"Ah, Kei! Ha, it's pretty weird seeing you without Yamaguchi by your side."_ )

Kei closes his eyes and thinks about what Yamaguchi said about Tokyo being overwhelming.

Before he realizes it, he says, "He was annoying." Somewhere in his mind, he hears the laugh his comment elicits from Yamaguchi, but it doesn't quite register. "It was... He was worried about me. I think he talked to Mom."

There's a silence that goes for too long, and then Yamaguchi says, "Huh?" in such a shocked voice, one that sounds almost  _wounded_ , that Kei immediately snaps out of whatever possessed him and remembers exactly why he never says these kinds of things. "Why was he- Why was he worried?"

Kei looks at Yamaguchi, thinks of the guy who harasses him during Modern Japanese literature and the person he always meets at the end of class, and says, "He thinks it's strange I'm in college and haven't dated anyone yet. It really... isn't his business."

It's an awful lie, but Yamaguchi exhales and suddenly how awful the lie is doesn't matter anymore. Though Kei wonders if Yamaguchi really believes it; from the way his breath caught when he spoke before, maybe he just wants to.

Yamaguchi laughs a little too weakly and flashes Kei a smile probably intended to be suggestive. "If that's all it is, I could pretend to be your boyfriend."

And Yamaguchi is  _joking_.

It's not a good joke by any means, one fueled by tension and awkwardness that he might not have said in a normal situation, but Kei knows, with every single fiber of his being, that Yamaguchi is joking.

That even if he wasn't joking, that even if that story about his brother being worried about him not dating was real, if it somehow found its way into reality when his brother had  _rarely if ever_  talked about dating to him, it would be too much to ask. That "too much to ask" notwithstanding, the idea is  _ridiculous_. Too complicated, too much effort, effectively pointless.

But rational as that is, it isn't enough.  _I could pretend to be your boyfriend_.

And there's so much Kei hates about that idea. That he'd have to rely on someone, that he'd have to rely on  _Yamaguchi_  who he knows he relies on for far too much even just now. The idea that he'd have to go to such degrading lengths - pretending to  _date_  someone - just to get people to stop bothering him. That he can't do that on his own.

But Kei thinks about how busy Yamaguchi is these days.

He thinks about Yachi living with him and Hinata coming over in an hour - forty-five minutes, now - and how  _fast_  life is in Tokyo. Fast enough to overwhelm someone from Miyagi even after they've lived there for months. He thinks about the near-silent afternoons he spends at the convenience store, those short before-class conversations he has at university where all he does is nod at someone while they rant about volleyball. He thinks about the way his mother looks at him when she thinks he can't see.

And Kei says, "Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, and i hope you enjoyed it! whether or not you did, i'd really appreciate if you left feedback, on here or by messaging me on [tumblr](https://www.spicymob.tumblr.com).
> 
> also, more characters from karasuno will show up later, pretty significantly, so look forward to that if that's something you'd look forward to! thanks.


	2. part one: beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yamaguchi would never ask him for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow. surprise, bitch? i actually cannot apologize enough for how long this took. one time, an author for a fic i really like updated late and said, "i think it was the kind of thing where i had to grow up in real life first before i could write the rest of the story." hopefully i've grown up enough to give you guys a good one.
> 
> speaking of growing up, in the gap between chapters, i have had the time to actually watch jurassic world (2015) and let me tell you. i take back everything i used yamaguchi to say about that. i liked it more than the original sequels, especially the ones on islands or in america or whatever. like what. you think i'm in this for the dinosaurs? no. i'm in this for DINOSAURS at a THEME PARK. the theme park is important.
> 
> if you're keeping up with this from the first chapter, let me just thank you, really and genuinely for sticking around. if you're joining just now, thanks for getting through the prologue. the rest of the fic is in chronological order, so no worries there :')
> 
> this story's very important to me. i hope you find a way to enjoy the chapter, and thank you for being here.
> 
> (also: the title is from the raymond carver short story. i'm really sorry i'm so pretentious. it's incurable.)

part one:

 

 

 

[what](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HPUwNOJa3w) we talk about when we talk about love

(beginning) 

 

 

 

 

♞ ♞ ♞  

The first thing Yamaguchi ever said to Kei was thank you. 

Kei remembers it. Kids didn't usually approach him first, especially not the way Yamaguchi had come up to him then. Enough rumors had circulated that he was the last person anyone would go to for conversation; the most he'd get were kids he embarrassed looking for a fight.

Back then, he hadn't minded people avoiding him, even if Akiteru and his mother did. He knew the kind of person he was: he liked silence, being alone, and talking to his brother. That people went out of their way to avoid him was a fact that barely registered.

With Yamaguchi, their first conversation only stood out because it wasn't normal, and how quickly Kei understood it was important. Because of how quickly Yamaguchi became someone who mattered. 

What Kei had then weren't so serious that they'd be called "walls," just extreme disinterest and a predisposition towards irritation, but they were enough to keep most kids away from him. But for some reason, that didn't go for Yamaguchi.

Yamaguchi, who suddenly started spending every free moment with him, who started following him  _home_. Who fought his way into Kei's life through every mean-spirited comment, to the point where Kei could barely remember what his life was like before him.

Of course Kei wouldn't forget the first time they spoke. The first thing he said to him.

It's all still there: a tiny freckled kid coming up to him, scared out of his bones but somehow mustering the courage to speak. That thank you, his words too fast and so obviously forced that the content of what he was saying barely registered. And after Yamaguchi dropped the topic so quickly, Kei didn't really give it a second thought.

Yachi brought it up, once, what Yamaguchi had been thanking him for then.  _"It's really cool, the way you guys met."_  Some attempt to connect with him after Yamaguchi left them alone together. They're closer now.

Kei knew that day in the gym wasn't the first time he met Yamaguchi. But what Yachi told him, the kind of story only someone with a hero complex (or maybe victim complex) would hold on to years later. It was a lot, for something Yamaguchi never mentioned to him.

Yamaguchi knew Kei forgot. Yamaguchi also knew Kei. Maybe that's why he never brought it up again; partly that it'd be embarrassing to remember something the other person didn't remember (especially the way Yamaguchi remembered it), but also that he knew he was thinking about it wrong. That Kei hadn't been trying to save him. That he didn't deserve that thank you at all.

Kei thinks about it, sometimes. It's true that Yamaguchi stopped getting bullied after people saw him sticking with Kei, and that he followed after Kei like someone who didn't have anyone else. It's true that Kei let him. 

There was a point in his life when Yamaguchi needed him. Kei's been thinking about that a lot, too.

Still, whatever concrete thing he did for Yamaguchi, it still doesn't make that moment make sense. That "thank you." 

A part of him wishes it did, wishes what he did for him years ago meant more than what it did. Wants to pretend that "what he did for him" was some kind of sacrifice, that Yamaguchi deciding to come into his life didn't do just as much for Kei as it did for him. That it didn't do more.

These days, Kei can barely stand the silence. And maybe he could blame Yamaguchi for that, for barreling into his life and redefining his standard for happiness, and maybe he could try to take credit for the things he did before.

But it doesn't matter, not that those are just weak excuses that make it easier for Kei to sleep at night, not that he can't even imagine saying those things to Yamaguchi.

He'll never need to. No matter what he does, no matter what he takes from him, Yamaguchi would never ask him for that.

Yamaguchi would never ask him for anything.

Maybe that's the worst part.

♞ ♞ ♞  

"Hey, you were here the other day! Listen, is the girl that was here before in? Uh." The blonde girl bites her lip and scrunches her nose. "Eri-san?"

Kei puts down his phone. He doesn't usually use it at work; maybe at the beginning of a shift to reply to one of Yamaguchi's texts he ignored during class, but since he works around the time Yamaguchi gets busy, it's not as if they can start chatting.

Their conversations are usually later at night, and Yamaguchi tends to fall asleep during them. But Yamaguchi isn't the reason his phone's been blowing up. Well, mostly.

A while ago, Kei texted Akiteru to ask when he'd be coming over again after Yamaguchi told him to, and Akiteru decided to respond in the most annoying way possible ( _Its only been a week, u miss me that much? :o_ ). 

Since then, he's been sending him messages whenever he gets the chance; science articles Kei is pretty sure he has to be seeking out at this point, movies he happenstances across and thinks they should watch together with their mother, and unprompted updates on his life ( _Getting coffee. Wish u were here :(_ and a sad dinosaur doodled on a stained napkin).

Most of it is messing around, but Kei knows a part of Akiteru is genuinely concerned that he needs him, which is. Not something that matters, or something Kei likes to think about. 

Whatever Akiteru's doing, it's better than it was before. Instead of the undercurrent of worry in a stream of texts Kei glances at but doesn't reply to, Kei used to feel it, shaky under Akiteru's fake nonchalant tones when he was over or the messages Kei would get filtered through their mother when he was away.

(Kei cringes remembering them, those nights his mother would wander in, not look at him, and then:  _Akiteru wants to know how you're liking university._ Like they couldn't ask him a simple question without establishing that kind of pseudo-distance.)

Akiteru had given up on texting Kei before, but now he's got some renewed motivation to talk to him again. Even if it's annoying, or because he's worried, at least Akiteru is being direct. It's hard to not prefer this over accidentally overhearing hushed conversations from the kitchen.

Not that this is even the place to be thinking about things like this.

Anyway, that someone saw him using his phone is a moot point. Kei's not worried about seeming unprofessional in front of the teenager that almost threw a tantrum in a convenience store.

He glances at her, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag, too self-conscious to meet his eyes. What did she ask him? "You don't know her," he finally says. It's been too long since she asked the question. "Why would I tell you where she is?"

She's just in the backroom, taking an unscheduled break. Every now and then, she asks Kei not to tell anyone and then ducks into the break room and inhales a homemade bento in record time. It's kind of impressive, the way she never takes longer than ten minutes.

Kei wouldn't mind either way. She only leaves when the store isn't busy.

The girl in front of Kei bites the inside of her lip. "Oh, uh... I just wanna talk to her." She looks up, and Kei can see the glint of his glasses in her pupils. "It's not really- I'm not like, somebody weird, y'know?"

Kei could stand to disagree. Not that involving himself in this seems remotely like a good idea. "Are you going to buy something?" 

"Will you tell me? If I buy something?" she asks, eyes lit up. Like she's found the soft side of the grouchy convenience store worker manning the cashier. Kei resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"No, you should buy something because this is a store," he says, breaking her gaze as a pout takes over her face. 

He picks up his phone and jams it into his back pocket, pretends there's something interesting in the cash register so she might take the hint and leave. A moment passes and nothing happens. 

Kei sighs. "You're making it hard to believe you aren't someone weird."

"What are you so suspicious about, anyway?" she grumbles, biting her lip. "I came all the way here. I'm not gonna, like, do anything."

"Why did you come if you're not going to do anything?"

"Hey, that's not- You know what I mean! Listen, just, it's kinda hard to get here. S'not that close to my high school. You really think I'm gonna kill that girl or something?" 

Her eyebrows are beginning to furrow and her fingers are starting to curl into a fist, just gently now. She's not mad now, but... give it a moment.

Something in Kei starts to race, and he can feel the ends of his mouth curve up, just a little. "The last time you were here it seemed like you were going to kill  _something_." 

Not too mean. He doesn't want her to get so upset she causes a scene. Just enough until she loses her temper. This game… He hasn't played it in a long time.

"I was havin' a bad day!" Overreaction, for Kei's light jab. "Kinda like the one it seems like you're having right now. You're actin' like it, anyway," she says. She crosses her arms. "I'm not even here to talk to you!"

"The person  _you_  want to talk to doesn't seem to be here to talk to you, either," Kei says. There's something else he could follow that with, something crueler, about being annoying or a bother or wasting time, but he doesn't.

She deflates visibly after Kei speaks, shoulders slumped, fist released. It's too far off from the reaction he wanted, enough to make him hesitate. "Eh? She's not here? You coulda just told me." She pauses. "I don't gotta be taking this from you."

That reaction. Enough to make Kei hesitate, but not enough to make him stop. "Then don't," Kei says, tone sharp. "Leave."

And she's there, teetering on the brink of it, for just a second; Kei sees it in the clench of her fists and the hardening of her eyes. He's almost sure she's either going to storm off or try to hit him, and then-

The tension in the room is gone, eyes softened, some soft, pseudo-amused kind of frown on her face. She looks at Kei like a child caught sneaking candy. "This place is kinda outta my way, though. If you could tell me when she'll be around again, I'd..."

Something in Kei's chest dulls. He'd been on the verge of that feeling, for a second, but she backed down. Disappointing, but he's used to being disappointed these days, and anyway, he's not supposed to be doing things like this anymore. Somewhere along the way, Yamaguchi stopped enjoying it and started scolding Kei instead of laughing. 

Kei never really missed it, back when Yamaguchi was in Miyagi. Things stopped being fun if they made Yamaguchi upset, and it was a craving that came less and less the less often he indulged it. 

He shouldn't have indulged it now. She's just a high schooler, Yamaguchi would probably tell him, and he'd be right.

Kei peers at her through his glasses, not looking up. She's still standing there in front of him, some awful forced smile having taken residence on her face and her arms stiff at her sides. 

Kei is thinking about Yamaguchi, and maybe it wouldn't hurt to tell her that the person she's looking for is in the back, especially if he'd be here watching them talk anyway. But his coworker is weird, with her. He isn't sure.

And Kei can't stop thinking about Yamaguchi. When was the last time he spoke this much to someone in the same room as him? The guy in his lit class? Even those conversations could barely be called conversations, with how one-sided they are. Kei exhales, softly.

"Why do you want to talk to her so badly?" he asks, cutting back the bite from his voice. He isn't sure she notices. "You don't even know her."

Her shoulders loosen, and she stops looking at Kei. She jams her hands in her pockets. "It's, uh. Last time I was here, I was kinda mean to her, and. I dunno. I guess I felt bad."

"You've been arguing with me this long because you want to apologize to a customer service worker for being rude?"

She wrinkles her nose. "If you put it like that, it sounds stupid." She frowns. "She seemed real hurt, y'know? I'm trying to be a nicer person lately. I shouldn't've yelled at her, even if she is a little weird."

"You should probably cut that last part from your apology," Kei comments, more absent than mean. 

"'Course I won't say that to her," she says, a hint of amusement of her voice. Kei wonders if she picked up on his change of mood, but a second passes, and it's like she can't see him anymore. "Just. I musta been awful to her, the way she looked. And my little brother told me I gotta start being nicer to people."

Kei doesn't say anything, doesn't even grunt in acknowledgement. Even if it's not much of a conversation, he hasn't talked to anyone like this in ages. Including Yamaguchi. 

The setting sun pouring in through the windows makes the store feel like a confessional. Kei wonders if he prefers what's happening now to the frazzled salarymen who start yelling at him when the coffee machine stops working.

"He wasn't trying to make me feel bad. I get mad pretty easily. You get it, right? Since you're pretty mean, too." 

She laughs to herself, and Kei decides he's better off letting her work out whatever she's going through than to respond to her jab. He's heard worse. 

"That time I came in, I found out a buncha girls I thought I was friends with were usin' me to threaten some people they didn't like. Like I'd beat people up if they said." 

Kei watches as her body relaxes. She turns around just a little, resting the side of her hip on the edge of the counter and looking out the window. She frowns noncommittally, like she's talking about something that doesn't really matter.

"They think I'm dumb, too. They're right on that one, though." She exhales in a way that's almost a laugh. "My brother said if I try to be a nicer person, I'll prob'ly meet nicer people. Dunno if that worked with you." 

She turns to flash him a weak grin, and Kei sighs, but still doesn't reply. A second passes, and she looks back out the window, somewhere farther off than the hardware store across the street. 

"Is she nice? Eri-san." 

Kei hesitates. There are a lot of things Kei could say about his coworker, things he noticed and filed away during the silent afternoons they spend stuck together behind the counter. 

Her propensity towards nervousness, the professional inexpressiveness of her face but how she doesn't even notice how easy to read her body language is. The restless tapping of her fingers and the canned lines she uses talking to customers. That hollow politeness.

There's an almost dreamy look in the girl's eyes, one that looks out of place on a person like her. The ribbon around her neck is frayed and tied too loose.

The collection of habits Kei's formed from their silent afternoons together isn't what she's looking for.

"She likes to clean," Kei settles on saying, because that's the kind of thing she would expect from him and the longest conversation he's had with his coworker was when she asked him not to tell anyone about her breaks.

The girl in front of him laughs, and she's about to say something when the door to the break room opens and his coworker comes out. "Sorry I took long. I spilled tea on the floor. I- cleaned it. Please don't-" Kei turns, watches his coworker stiffen. "It's you!"

The blonde girl stands up straight, makes her way so she's still standing at the counter but closer to Kei's coworker than him. "My name's Misaki," she says, and Kei can hear her try to make her voice less rough than it really is. She rubs the back of her neck. "I came t'- The other day I was kinda mean. I'm, uh. Sorry."

"It's... fine?" Kei's coworker says, voice apprehensive. 

This is the reason Kei hadn't been eager to answer any questions about her; she's private enough that doesn't even like speaking to him, actively tries to cut down conversations with customers that go further than the  _How are you? - Good. You? - Good. Have a nice day_  exchange she's used to. And this girl comes in to apologize to her for being mean three days ago.

"It's just, uh. I was just havin' a bad day, y'know? Shouldn't've treated you like that 'cause of it. Now that I think about it, you were even bein' kinda nice that time. I'm real sorry."

There's a sincerity in her voice, the same one that made Kei rethink his game of riling her up. He thinks his coworker hears it. She rubs her arm. "It's really fine. Don't... worry about it. Uh... There've been worse people than you here. Well, I don't usually deal with them, but you shouldn't, uh. You didn't have to come apologize to me. I didn't really mind it."

That's a lie. One time, Kei stepped in when a woman that was clearly dealing with her own issues started getting far too personal with her insults towards her. She'd been frazzled, in that imperceptible way she always is, but it hadn't affected her the next day. 

"Ha, you're still bein' nice. I know I was pretty awful." The blonde girl's face drops, and both of them are silent a second. Normally, Kei's coworker would take the opening and sidle away, but she just stands there, watching the girl in front of her like a deer in the headlights. 

"No, it's, uh," his coworker says articulately. Kei can see her run all the possible ways the conversation could go through her head, sees as none of them work and she closes her mouth. This is about the time that she runs off and Kei deals with whatever's giving her anxiety, but she's not doing that today. "You were, um. You were having a bad day, that time?"

The other girl's eyes widen, and she looks up, genuine confusion in her face. A second passes, and she grins, a little weakly. "Yeah. A buncha girls I thought were my friends, but, uh. Y'know how it goes. Heh, I got all my anger out already, so it's no big deal." She laughs lightly, and then tugs on a strand of her hair. "Well, I dyed my hair yellow for 'em, though."

"It-It's nice! I like it!" Kei's coworker says, too fast, and he can hear the other girl laugh, but before she replies, the door opens and a distressed salaryman wanders his way to the coffee machine. 

Kei's coworker freezes for a minute, like she's just remembered where she is, but the girl in front of her just leans a little closer, says something with a smile on her face, and just like that, she relaxes.

Their voices are lower, now, and Kei can't hear them unless he tries. He doesn't mind it. He's been eavesdropping too long.

He turns away, watches as the salaryman walks to the fridge and picks up the lunch closest to him without even looking at it. When he comes to the cashier, he doesn't spare Kei a glance, just pays and breathes out an exhausted "Thanks," shoving his change in his pocket as he leaves the store. 

Kei can hear soft laughter from the girl he was talking to before, catches a glimpse of an awkward smile on his coworker's face. He fishes his phone out of his pocket and finds two new texts from his brother: a blurry picture of the moon in the afternoon sky and  _Do u know how this happens???_ Nothing from Yamaguchi.

Kei turns off his phone and waits for the next customer.

♞ ♞ ♞  

"No, see, Yacchan has this friend in drama club, and we've been talking," Kei hears Yamaguchi say through the phone. "I thought it'd be pretty easy to fake us being boyfriends, but there's a lot of stuff we didn't think about!"

Kei finishes putting his laptop away and slings his bag over his shoulder. He doesn't need the elaboration; Yamaguchi made his anxieties pretty clear in the barrage of texts he's steadily been sending since 4 AM last night. He'd been avoiding the growing notification number in his messages tab until right before class this morning, at which point he skimmed his best friend's slowly growing mental breakdown and decided to call instead.

"What did we overlook?" Kei asks, trying to make his question sound genuine and not like he's only humoring him. 

Yamaguchi has something of a point. It's true he agreed to the whole thing far too easily, and Kei cringes when he remembers their conversation that night. The way Yamaguchi asked, " _You know I was kidding, right?_ " and the way Kei just kept insisting, like something possessed him. 

It wasn't coercion - when he realized Kei cared enough to insist he immediately agreed - but Kei saw it in Yamaguchi's eyes, when he agreed. The same thing he sees in his mother's eyes when she asks how his day was.

The next day, Yamaguchi took charge on their ridiculous, overly complicated plan, badgering Kei to ask Akiteru when his next visit would be and planning their next date -coincidentally to the new awful superhero movie Yamaguchi definitely would've dragged Kei too anyway. 

It's suspicious, how radically Yamaguchi changed his tone, and a part of Kei wonders if he's faking it. But whether he’s faking it or not, Kei knows this is a bad idea anyway, the kind he should put a stop to. That it'd be so easy to do it, that he'd just have to call Yamaguchi and say something like _What the hell are we doing?_ and Yamaguchi would drop it in a second.

He also knows that he won't.

( _It's been so long since Yamaguchi smiled this much while they spoke._ )

But even despite all of that, the things Yamaguchi's getting anxious over don't make sense. Like they don't each other well enough to pretend to date. Like they didn't spend the past five years as part of a matched set. 

It's been a while since then, and Kei doesn't know everything anymore, but he still knows Yamaguchi better than he knows himself, and whatever Yamaguchi knows about him is worlds more than what anyone else thinks they know about him. That hasn't changed.

Still. Kei does know Yamaguchi, and that means he knows doesn't get insecure that way anymore. Either Yachi's friend really got to him or he's so exhausted his mind started making up problems.

"Like, uh..." Yamaguchi starts. "Where was our first date? How did we get together? Who liked who first? We've been friends for a really long time, so there needs to be a story, right?"

Kei frowns as he heads toward the bus stop. "My mother and Akiteru won't ask. You know that. I'm not the kind of person who would talk about something like that, anyway."

"Yeah, but I am!" Yamaguchi says, making a weird kind of noise, somewhere between a whine and a groan. "I've known them for years, Tsukki. I thought this whole thing would be kind of fun, but I'll feel bad if they find out."

Oh. Kei hadn't thought about that. The way his family has been lately, if they knew it was Kei who insisted, they probably wouldn't be upset with Yamaguchi, or even with him. But that isn't something he can tell Yamaguchi.

He bites the inside of his cheek and thinks.

"The last time we went out together was the crepe place, wasn't it? That can be our first date, then. I..." What had Yamaguchi asked earlier? "I liked you first. I told you I like you when you came back last month, and now we're together."

A moment passes and Yamaguchi doesn't speak. The bus comes, and Kei gets on.

"Did I miss something?" Kei finally says. "I don't think they'll ask us for more than that."

"O-Oh, sorry! I just... thought we'd be doing it the other way around." Yamaguchi chuckles halfheartedly. "Kind of weird to think about you having a crush on me, you know?"

Yeah. "Don't flatter yourself, Yamaguchi," Kei says. "We're just pretending."

"Eh, I know, Tsukki!" Yamaguchi replies and the laugh is back in his voice. "It's just hard to think of someone as mean as you having a crush, you know?"

He's teasing, but Kei doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything, just watches the streetlights pass out the window. The old woman he's standing above looks annoyed he's talking on the phone.

"Oh, okay, how about this? Maybe you confessed to me last month when I visited - that's romantic, right, 'confessed' - but I've liked you since high school! Since I saw you, uh." Kei hears Yamaguchi bite his lip. "Since that time after we played Seijoh and you said ' _Nice serve, Yamaguchi_.'" 

Yamaguchi pitches his voice down when he imitates him, like Kei's some supervillain in a movie. Kei sighs, even if he can't help but be a little bit amused. "It's not a competition, you know. Did that even happen?"

The old woman Kei's standing by shoves him as she gets off the bus.

"Huh? Of course it did! In second year, our practice match before the Interhigh. I can't believe you don't remember! You're a pretty awful boyfriend," Yamaguchi says, and Kei hears the smirk in his voice. "Anyway, I had a crush on you since second year, but I was afraid to tell you since you're such a scary guy."

"If I'm so scary, why would you have a crush on me?" Kei asks. Never mind that it's been years since Yamaguchi was afraid of him. "Anyway, why do you even remember that?"

"The Seijoh thing?" Yamaguchi laughs. "I remember 'cause it was really weird! That time, I thought to myself, 'Wow, Tsukki's become a pretty nice guy now that he's gotten so into volleyball!' But I was wrong."

"You know, I don't think anyone's even going to ask you about things like that.”

"It's good to have it, though," Yamaguchi says. "Ito-kun was telling me about it! Uh, that's Yacchan's friend I told you about earlier. He said you have to build your character's backstory so you can really channel them."

"You're just being yourself, aren't you?" Kei asks. "Anyway, Yachi's friend... you told him what we're doing?"

"Huh? Of course not! Actually, he was just over the other day because he and Yacchan were working together on some group project and she wanted me over because she didn't want to be alone with him. Not that he's creepy! She just doesn't like him that much." Yamaguchi laughs. "He's kind of obnoxious. Yacchan said I'm good with those kinds of people. But I just think he's funny!"

Kei doesn't say anything.

"Kei-kun," Yamaguchi finally says, and a shiver rolls down Kei's back. "Do you think I should call you Kei-kun again? Or maybe Kei _-chan_."

There's a million things Kei could say to that: about how a couple weeks of long-distance dating was far too short for Kei to start calling the person he's known for years by his first name, about how Yamaguchi would be too shy to ask him if he could call him that this early.

But it's been a long time since he heard Yamaguchi say his first name, and for a second, Kei is somewhere else.

They're eleven again, and Kei is standing with Yamaguchi by the vending machine outside the gym, sipping on a box of strawberry milk. What's left of the sun is catching on Yamaguchi's face in a glossy sheen of sweat. Kei's thinking to himself how strange it is Yamaguchi smiles that widely and gets himself that exhausted every game when he plays so unexceptionally, but he isn't telling him that. 

For a while, he just watches the kid that started calling himself his friend - fishing change out of his pocket, dropping it, buying a bottle of Potari Sweat and wrestling with it, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth. The sight is almost funny, but he doesn't say that to Yamaguchi, just takes the bottle from him and opens it. 

_"Thanks, Kei-kun!"_

And then Yamaguchi  _smiles_ -

"Eh," Yamaguchi says, a little dismissively. "Tsukki's cuter, I think."

Kei closes his eyes and opens them again. That's - ha.

It's this immersive kind of nostalgia that's been catching him lately, on his commutes, those hours at the convenience store. Some awkward teenager orders a meat bun and he spends ten minutes reminiscing about the time Kageyama lost a bet and bought for the entire team. Like it meant something to Kei when it happened.

It's always embarrassing, because Kei knows he never thought twice about these things back then, that he spent most of the moments he catches himself thinking about now counting down the time until they ended. But what he just did is-

Like Yamaguchi's gone. He's talking on the phone with him right now, and he still-

Well. Anyway. "Yamaguchi," he says, inflecting his voice so he knows exactly what he means.

Yamaguchi laughs. "I'm just getting into character, Tsukki. Actually, I think you should be putting more effort in!" Kei hears Yamaguchi smile to himself. "Oh, but I'd feel strange if you started calling me Tadashi."

"That's not something you have to worry about," Kei says. Yamaguchi laughs again, and for a while, there's silence. Kei stares out the bus window and thinks about hanging up, but he doesn't. 

"Eh, what are you doing now? Aren't you usually working around this time? It's when you finally answer all my texts, anyway," Yamaguchi says, exaggerating the whine in his voice.

"I'm going to get lunch," Kei says. "I have an hour before my shift."

"Oh, you told me your mom doesn't pack your lunch anymore. Aw. You know, sometimes I think about her cooking! I know she gave me her recipes last time I was there, but it's not the same," Yamaguchi says. "Well, at least Yachi likes them. Where are you gonna get lunch, anyway?"

"There's a WcDonalds a couple of blocks by the store," Kei tells him. "I'll go there." 

It's the kind of thing that's so mundane Kei doesn't see the point in saying it, and he thinks about hanging up. But whenever he and Yamaguchi talk, they always end up here somehow, with Yamaguchi investigating the little facts of Kei's day-to-day life that will never actually matter. Yamaguchi enjoys it, to some extent, and Kei's past minding telling Yamaguchi things that are pointless.

"That's cool, Tsukki!" Yamaguchi says, even though it isn't. "Get french fries for me!"

"You work at a family restaurant," Kei points out. "I'm sure you have enough."

"Eh, there's no such thing!" Yamaguchi says, putting what might be too much into being mock offended. "Anyway, they aren't as good as the ones at WcDonalds. I swear they put something in them!" Kei doesn't reply, and he can hear gears turning on Yamaguchi's end of the phone. "Our burgers are pretty good, though. You should come try them sometime!"

Kei feels himself stiffen. "I don't like American food."

"We have great shortcake, too, y'know! Actually, that's how I got the job. Didn't I tell you? The girl that sits next to me in math class told me about this place that has the _best_  cakes, so I scoped it out to see if it was good enough to take you there, and they had a 'help wanted' sign hanging up!"

Kei's heard this story before. He doesn't mind hearing Yamaguchi tell it again, he thinks to himself, looking out the bus window.

"And, you know, Tsukki-" That's a nervous tic, Yamaguchi saying his name so much. "-it was good enough. To take you. I liked it and I don't even like that kind of stuff, usually! Um, Tsukki, you know, I like being able to see my mom every time I come down, but you should come up here, too! I think you'd really like it! Uh, maybe. But- Oh, shoot!"

Yamaguchi yelps, unexpectedly. Kei wonders if he stubbed his toe. "Are you okay?"

"Speaking of work, I have to go! We've been talking a while, huh?" Yamaguchi says, and the line goes silent. 

Kei thinks for a second that Yamaguchi hung up and he didn't notice, but then he speaks again. 

"Uh, Tsukki? Don't mind what I said. I just- There're a lot of cool places I want to take you here, and I think it'd be nice for my coworkers to meet you, since I talk about you so much, but it doesn't matter. We have the whole thing with your family. And I- I don't mind going down to Miyagi. It's nice to come home."

Outside, there's a little girl with smeared ice cream across her face running too far ahead of her father. It's close to winter.

"Text you later, okay?"

"Mm," Kei replies.

♞ ♞ ♞  

Kei can hear his coworker ringing up customers from the back of the store.

There's an earbud in his left ear. A while ago, his phone was playing a podcast episode Akiteru recommended him, something semi-educational about different kinds of stars, how they're all destined to either die out or explode. 

To lighten the mood, the host made a couple of tongue-in-cheek jokes, spun it as something like  _If everything turns to dust eventually, there's no point in worrying about things that one day won't matter. Enjoy the time you have._

A little heavy-handed, even if the science was more in-depth and accurate than Kei would have thought from something that would end on that kind of note. After it ended, Kei didn't bother playing the next episode.

He's in a rhythm now, anyway. Take out a box of red bean ice cream bars, straighten it in the freezer, take out the next one. His fingers are nearly numb, but there's something strangely satisfying about the process, something that would suffer with the distraction of a sappy pseudo-scientist lecturing in his left ear. He wonders if this is one of the things that will become meaningless when the Sun consumes the Earth.

Usually, Kei is working the register. He's sure that's even more meaningless.

(Today, when he saw how big the boxes his coworker was wheeling around were and said he'd take over restocking, she let him, instead of insisting she was fine and having trouble later.)

"Um, could I have your ID, please?" he hears his coworker ask. There's a trace of apprehension in her voice, just slightly more than usual. Kei doesn't mind it.

"Huh?" a gruff voice responds, one that sounds considerably above twenty-one. "Are you being cute? S'alright. Just ring it up."

Kei sighs, turns back to the seemingly bottomless cardboard box below him. He's working on the soda pops now, and he's heard this conversation before. 

It's a result of the oddly formal thing about his coworker, her insistence on carding everyone who comes to the store. Kei's thought about telling her she doesn't have to, that he doesn't do it and you can sometimes tell people's ages by the color of their hair, but he's never felt like making the effort. She isn't stupid, anyway. He's sure she's already picked up on whatever he might tell her.

Kei's back in rhythm, restocking to the tune of his coworker saying a line about store policy and her customer's reluctant compliance when he hears, "You know what? While we're at it, could I get a pack of those cigars? Davidoff?"

He's asking for the nice cigars, the kind they keep on the top shelf behind the counter. The last time his coworker used the stepladder, the only reason she hadn't injured herself is that he steadied the ladder before it wobbled. Kei's BPM shifts to 500 and the freezer is done in minutes, albeit not well or even properly. 

But right before Kei's by the counter he hears a different voice, one he wishes he imagined, say -

"That's high up, isn't it? If you need help, I could-"

And he freezes.

"It's fine, sir!" his coworker replies, anxiety dialed up to a thousand times more than normal. "Please don't inconvenience yourself!"

"Eh? No, it's okay! I'm not suspicious! I just want to help!"

"It's fine, sir!" his coworker repeats, louder and more strained than before. 

"You don't have to call me 'sir'! I'm going to come around the counter- Please calm down! I won't do anything. This is what you were trying to get, right? Here you go."

"Ah... Thank you."

"No problem. Uh... You should ask for help next time instead of almost hurting yourself."

Kei tightens his grip on the cart and thinks about making his way back to the freezer section. 

He could have stood to do the job better. It's the kind of thing his coworker would pass by and obsess over for an hour, the kind of thing that would ensure his coworker never decides to brave manning the register alone instead of hiding in the back restocking. 

He has to go back and fix it. That blonde girl that comes in every now and then, she'll be irritated with him if he discourages the confidence she's been nurturing in her. She's annoying enough. He doesn't want to deal with that. 

He motions to pull his cart back, but before he can turn around, he hears, "Tsukishima?"

Kei forces himself to finally look up, and seeing the man staring him down across the room - skin tanned despite the nearing onset of winter cold, hair pulled up in a loose, sloppy bun, the shadow of facial hair lining the edges of his jaw - is like seeing a ghost. 

For the first time in ages, Kei wishes he could turn invisible.

(Usually, he doesn't have to.)

"Asahi-san," Kei replies, and the cart squeaks with how abruptly it stops. Slowly, he rolls it across to the counter, knowing he has no choice now but to leave the unkempt freezer behind. He's vulnerable under Asahi's stare.

"Wow. I haven't seen you for a long time. I didn't know you were still in Miyagi. Aren't you in university?"

There's something in the curve of his hesitant smile, some trace of serendipity after the shock. Hope for missed connections, even if it's the one to a bratty middle blocker he'd forgotten existed. Kei can't quite understand it.

"I am," Kei replies. 

Asahi nods when Kei tells him the name of the university he's going to, but it's missing from his face, what Kei saw when he told Yamaguchi and his mother and his teachers where he was spending the next three years. More than likely, it went over his head; that was years ago for him now, and he doesn't think Asahi ever bothered with universities, with how sure he was of what he was going to do in the future. How he did it.

Still. Kei wonders if he might be hiding it, that he expected something else from him, that he'd ship himself off to Tokyo or Kyoto to attend some esteemed university. That he'd try for Todai. He wonders if Asahi ever cared enough to expect anything from him.

He can't figure out how he feels about that.

"How's Yamaguchi? Did he stay, too?" 

He grins a little bit when he asks, and it's like Kei can see the memories flooding behind his eyes, little things from high school that almost faded entirely. Something like jealousy swirls in Kei's chest.

He closes his eyes and opens them. That question.

"He's in Tokyo," Kei says. "But he's doing well."

Kei turns his gaze back to the cart, pushes it back behind the counter. Asahi half-follows, standing on the opposite side, an inch from leaning on the heated racks. Out of the corner of Kei’s eye, he can see his coworker shrink back, but he doesn't pay her any attention. 

"Oh. Strange seeing you without him. Glad you still talk, though," Asahi says, tone casual and light. There's nothing behind it. Kei moves behind the other register, and Asahi follows him. "You're still playing volleyball?"

"My university doesn't have a club," Kei replies, because it's easier than saying the other thing.

Asahi frowns, the edges soft. "Really?" he asks, rubbing the back of his neck. "You know, the guys are a little older than us, but there's always a spot on the Neighborhood Association for you. Or- me, Nishinoya, and Tanaka mess around at the park every now and then. We could play two-on-two."

That's right. Nishinoya and Tanaka are still in Miyagi, too. It was only last year, but he can barely imagine what it'd be like to talk to them again. "Oh," Kei says, because he doesn't feel like thinking of an excuse to make. He considers asking how a two-on-two game of volleyball would work but decides not to mind it.

"You should come by the farm sometime. It's a couple of stops away from here. Tanaka and Nishinoya come around on their free afternoons, and they'd like seeing you," Asahi says. 

Kei doubts it matters either way. "You have a farm?" he asks absently, fiddling with the register.

"Yeah, my family. Rice paddies. Good thing one of my deliveries ended up being around here," Asahi says. Kei feels him eye his visor and polo and hears something close to a chuckle. "I never would have imagined you working customer service at Karasuno, you know."

Kei looks at Asahi. That same content smile is on his face, with a hint of a smirk behind it, but nothing too severe. A joke between old friends, maybe. "I needed the money," Kei lies.

Asahi laughs again, reaches out like he's going to pat Kei on the shoulder, and then thinks better of it. He catches sight of something behind him and stops abruptly. "Ah, that's right. I came here to get lunch. Do you know what's good here?"

Kei furrows his eyebrows. "It's 1-Eleven," he points out.

"Yeah," Asahi says, his tone something like amusement but more like worry. He looks over the heated racks. "I'll just get a rice ball, then. I still have another delivery."

"They're by the fridge," Kei says. Asahi walks away then, and Kei watches his back, how he makes his way over to the fridge and contemplates his six choices like they're life or death. He can feel his coworker stare at him; maybe shock that he's talking to someone, or intimidation that he knows someone like Asahi.

Didn't he help her with something? She should know what he's like, now. Kei looks over at her, and her eyes widen. "I'll take over the register. Could you look at the freezer? I didn't finish organizing it."

"O-Okay!" she says, that little bit frazzled. He guesses he doesn't ask things from her often. Her path crosses with Asahi's when she leaves the counter, and Asahi smiles at her hesitantly. She looks away, but mumbles something like, "Enjoy your meal, sir!"

Asahi's shoulders are slumped when he puts two rice balls on the counter, plum and salmon roe. While Kei starts scanning, he hears Asahi say, "Your coworker's afraid of me..."

She can hear them. The store isn't that big. "Where's your last delivery?" he asks, bagging up Asahi's lunch.

"Oh. Twenty minutes from here," Asahi replies, smiling a little sheepishly. "I should get going soon."

"That's ¥513," Kei reads off the register. Asahi fumbles through his pocket for a handful of coins and drops them in Kei's palm. "Thanks."

"Maybe I should've gotten meat buns. For old times' sake," Asahi says, joking more than anything.

"They don't taste the same as the ones at the Foothill Store," Kei says, mostly to humor him. Kei counts his change out of the cash register, rips off his receipt, and holds it out to him.

"You're right," Asahi says, taking the coins and pocketing them. He looks at Kei, and Kei swears he sees a softness reflected in his pupils. He might be imagining it. "I meant what I said about coming by sometime. They come on Fridays, usually. It'd be nice to have you."

"Mm," Kei says.

Asahi worries his bottom lip. He drops the change and fumbles through his pockets for a pen, and then leans down over his receipt. "I'll give you my address," he says. "Do you still have my phone number? It hasn't changed. Ah, I'll just write it down, too."

When he's done scribbling, he holds the receipt out to Kei. With an absent "thank you,” he takes it from him.

Asahi smiles. "Nice seeing you, Tsukishima," he says as takes his change, picks up the plastic bag, and heads out.

As the door closes, Kei shoves the receipt in his back pocket and resolves to forget about it.

♞ ♞ ♞  

"Did Akiteru tell you when he's coming yet?"

Yamaguchi's pouting at Kei now, a little exaggeratedly, and fiddling with a loose strand of hair. It's long again; his bangs are pinned up with a lilac butterfly clip, courtesy of Yachi (" _Do you think it's girly, Tsukki? I didn't want to ask her for a different one, but I don't know if I can wear this at work._ ") and the strands by his ears are nearly brushing his shoulders.

There's something Kei likes about Yamaguchi's hair when it's like this. Something about how it frames his face, or how it catches the light. 

But Yamaguchi's been complaining about it for a while. How he doesn't have time to find a barber (" _You should see what the thousand-yen guy did to Kageyama!_ ") but it won't get out of his way, when he's deciphering a calculus problem or trying to look his professors in the eye. Sooner or later, he'll need to get it cut.

"It's the same as before. His company put him in charge of a project. He doesn't know when he'll be able to take a Friday off," Kei replies. "They only just moved him to that department. I think they're asking too much of him." 

Yamaguchi scrunches his nose, and his eyebrows furrow, just a little. "I don't know," he says, half his mouth upturned in a lopsided smile. "Sometimes it's nice to be relied on."

Yamaguchi's hair is glowing, by the too-orange light of his cheap desk lamp. A little bit like a halo. It doesn't match the bags under his eyes.

Yamaguchi sighs. "That's disappointing, though. I wanted to come see you again." He slumps back in his chair. "Maybe I'll come anyway! We could tell your mom first."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Kei replies. "Besides, aren't you busy?"

"But I  _miss_  you, Tsukki," Yamaguchi says, and there's too much of a laugh behind his pout. "It's true I have something for class this weekend, but if I do it on the train, I think I can still come to see you! There's this new movie that came out last week with dinosaurs. I saw a commercial when me and Yacchan were watching TV the other night. I think you'd really like it!"

"I know," Kei says. "You texted me about it. And you sent me a link to the trailer."

Strictly speaking, what Yamaguchi's telling him about isn't a movie. It's a feature-length documentary, in limited release, about how dinosaurs are nothing how people used to imagine them. Feathers, how some evolved, walking among them today, how some are gone forever. The implications of all the new findings they've made, since Kei and Yamaguchi were kids.

Yamaguchi does like dinosaurs - ones like Godzilla or the Tyrannosaurus Rex in  _Jurassic Park._  Big, and flashy, and cool.

Kei remembers the afternoons he spent talking Kei into watching movies like those instead of whatever special was on the nature channel. And maybe in the beginning, it was just being sick of the nature channel, but Yamaguchi did genuinely enjoy them, where Kei didn't. He remembers him smiling as he hid his eyes, the way he cheered at every close call.

But this movie Yamaguchi's so excited about, it's worlds away from Godzilla. That's obvious from the first ten seconds of the trailer. Kei knows, without a doubt, that this is exactly the kind of movie Yamaguchi would hate. 

"Yeah! It's cool, right? I think so even though I usually find that stuff pretty boring! We should go watch it!" Yamaguchi says, sitting up now. There's a strange kind of light in his eyes, maybe hysteria from exhaustion. "Let me look at train tickets-"

"It's fine, Yamaguchi," Kei interrupts him. "We'll wait until Akiteru comes. You're tired. If you have the time, you should sleep. Or get a haircut."

At the mention, Yamaguchi tugs at a strand of hair by his ear, and frowning a little at the length. "Yeah, you're right. It's been really annoying lately," he says. "I guess I just thought it'd be nice to see you again."

"Idiot. You're seeing me now, you know," Kei points out. "We talk every day. It's fine if you don't visit every other week."  

"Yeah," Yamaguchi says, still not looking at him. "I still wish I could see you, though."

There's a request on the tip on Yamaguchi's tongue, one he doesn't think he's allowed to ask. One he won't let himself ask. Kei can see it behind chapped pink lips, knows exactly what it is. He remembers what Yamaguchi told him, the time they talked on the bus. What he used to bring up a lot more often, until Kei made it clear he wasn't interested.

There's something in Yamaguchi's gaze, the way he's so intently studying the corner of his computer screen. When they were younger, all Kei saw in his eyes were stars.

Kei inhales. "I saw Asahi-san the other day," he says. "At work."

Yamaguchi's eyebrows furrow, and whatever was clouding his face disappears. "Asahi-san...?" 

It works, to the extent Kei wanted it to. Changing the subject. If Yamaguchi's picked up on it, or how abrupt it is, he doesn't point it out. The atmosphere in the room has shifted entirely.

But it isn't what he expected, how Yamaguchi's looking at Kei like he just spoke Chinese and expected him to understand it. Asahi must have been a longer time ago than Kei realized.

"Ah! From Karasuno, right? Our original ace!" He laughs. "Sorry, there's a girl in my math class with the same name."

Yamaguchi is smiling now, pleasant from the memory.

"Wow. I forgot he's still in Miyagi! I think the last time I saw him was at our graduation, right?" he says, hand placed thoughtfully by his chin. Kei nods. "I guess it's probably strange you didn't see him sooner."

Not that Kei's been around Karasuno, recently. He doesn't say anything.

"Oh, Nishinoya and Tanaka are still there, right?" Yamaguchi asks. "I'm surprised they haven't been trying to hang out with you from the beginning! They were always a little nosy that way."

Nishinoya and Tanaka don't know he's still in Miyagi. In his last year of high school, Kei hadn't been eager to talk about the future. It makes sense, in retrospect. But he doesn’t want to talk about that with Yamaguchi.

"That's funny. I haven't thought about them in a long time," he says. "But it's nice to remember." 

He leans forward, chin resting on his palm. His gaze is somewhere far off, dusting off memories he hasn't needed for a long time. 

"Oh, it must have been stranger for you if you were in the same room as Asahi!" he exclaims, sitting up suddenly. "What was he even doing there? Don't you work near your university? That's pretty far from Karasuno, right?"

"He was making a delivery," Kei explains. "His family has a rice farm."

"Huh? Oh, he does! Noya told me once. That's strange to think about. But it's also a little romantic, right? Growing up on a farm. I kinda wish I did," Yamaguchi says, grinning to himself. 

Kei can imagine it: Yamaguchi climbing trees and collecting cicadas. Rolling around in dirt from the fields. He wonders what kind of person he'd be now if he'd grown up like that. More confident, maybe.

Kei wonders what kind of person he'd be if Yamaguchi grew up like that. Maybe they'd never meet at all.

"Ah, but what did you guys even talk about?" Yamaguchi asks. "You did talk to him, right?"

"He asked about you," Kei says before he realizes, and a part of him doesn't want to mention that to Yamaguchi, what it might imply. But it might be worse, bringing up anything else he talked with Asahi about that day.

Kei isn't sure. It was a strange afternoon. He tries to not think about it.

Yamaguchi's face lights up. "Wow, he remembered me?" he asks, smiling at the thought. 

"Of course he did," Kei replies. "He remembered me, didn't he? You shouldn't be so surprised."

Yamaguchi pouts in the same exaggerated way he always does. "Eh, but that's different! You're  _Tsukki_!" Yamaguchi says, as if that's a explanation, and then he goes back to grinning to himself. "Maybe we should talk to him again. It's weird it's always only me and you when I go back to Miyagi, right?" 

These days, sometimes it's the only thing that makes sense. Kei doesn't say anything.

"Oh well. I wish I had a cool story to tell you, but Kageyama and Hinata have been the same as usual, you know?" he says. "Yacchan's been tired. Oh, I have been spending time with Ito-kun lately, though! Do you remember him? He's the weird person from Yacchan's class. The one who got me so nervous about pretending to be your boyfriend." He laughs to himself at the memory. "I was really stressed then."

"Really?" Kei asks, mouth dry.

Yamaguchi looks at Kei thoughtfully when he hears him speak. There's something clear in his eyes. He laughs a little awkwardly. "Ito-kun? Yeah. He likes getting coffee with me and talking to me about the play he's writing. I don't really get what it's about. I'm not sure he does, either. But it's funny, listening to him talk about it."

"Mm," Kei says, but he isn't sure if Yamaguchi hears him. His mind is somewhere else now, carried away by what he's talking about.

"You know," Yamaguchi says, oddly enthusiastic, "he reminds me of you! That's why I like talking to him so much. Uh, Yacchan doesn't really get it, but she doesn't know you as well as I do. He tells me a lot of weird things, too."

Something tightens in Kei's chest. "That's enough to make him remind you of me?" Kei asks, maybe too sharply. If Yamaguchi picks up on it, he doesn't let on.

He laughs a little. "Yacchan said that, too. Well, she's never listened to you talk about the anatomy of great white sharks at 3 AM, so it's not like she really got it. But..." 

Yamaguchi scrunches his nose and looks off into the air, like the words he needs are somewhere there. After a second, he fixes his gaze completely on Kei, and a prickling feeling runs through his skin. A stare Kei can feel through a computer screen. He didn't think it would be the kind of thing to come from Yamaguchi.

Yamaguchi blinks, exhales, and leans forward, just slightly. His lips curve into a gentle smile, bordering on wistful.

"I guess I can't really explain it. Especially to you!" he says, and he laughs. "But when we're talking, and he starts going way into detail about his play and he loses me completely, it feels kind of... comforting, maybe? The way those nights we'd stay up in your room felt."

Yamaguchi's expression could light up a room. He's not looking at Kei now, just completely caught up in the feelings he's describing. A moment passes, and he remembers where he is.

"I don't know," Yamaguchi says, the faintest laugh escaping his lips. "It's just... a nice feeling to have, you know?"

It must be.

♞ ♞ ♞  

"My girlfriend won't talk to me," the boy from Kei's Japanese Literature class says, slumping over the milkshake he's nursing. Kei leans against the cushioned back of the bench in their booth and wonders why he let him drag him here.

He'd left the classroom walking side-by-side with him, like always, fully intending to dodge what would have been his thousandth invitation to volleyball club ( _"Halfway through semester isn't too late to join, y'know!"_ ) and go straight home.

But instead of hastily leaving Kei for the girl that always calls out to him once he walks out the classroom door, he grabbed Kei by the sleeve and told him to have lunch with him.

Though – grabbing aside, he wasn't that pushy, just bribed him with a burger and fries. On a normal day, Kei would have turned him down. He isn't sure why today isn't a normal day.

"What did you do?" Kei asks, only because he knows he's supposed to. 

He takes a sip of the strawberry milkshake he ordered (His classmate had reached over to put a hand on his shoulder and nodded, saying,  _"Nice, man. I get it. Real men wear pink, right?_ " Kei shook him off and told him to stop being stupid.) and thinks about taking Yamaguchi here, sometime. Their fries are floppy, the way he likes them.

If he did bring Yamaguchi here, it would be the one good thing to come from this afternoon. He doesn't know anything about his classmate's girlfriend, or really anything about his classmate outside of his unprompted takes on their assigned readings or overenthusiasm for volleyball. There's no reason for Kei to be invested in what he's talking about.

Still, that he's talking about these things. Even that he forced him to lunch. Kei isn't the only one who isn't normal today.

"Man, why'd I have to do something? You got so little faith in me," Kei's classmate says, his mouth downturned more for show than anything else. Not like he doesn't talk to him like this every time they see each other.

Kei can't honestly disagree, and he doesn't care enough to lie. "Why are you talking to me about this?" Kei decides to ask, not bothering to mince words. His classmate isn't the kind of person who would need him to, anyway.

"Ice cold as usual, huh? You know, when I used to watch our games against your team in high school, I always called you... 'Mean Beanpole Glasses Guy.' It never really caught on, but-" He thrusts a french fry in Kei's direction to emphasize his point. "-people always knew who I was talking about. So."

Kei was the only person on the Karasuno volleyball team with glasses. He decides not to point it out. "So?"

His classmate tilts his head and scrunches up his mouth. "Dude. You know I'm buying you lunch right now? You could be a  _little_  nicer. Geez." But before Kei starts to wonder if he's right, before thoughts of Yamaguchi flood his brain, his classmate laughs to himself and says, "Hey, but I guess you wouldn't be the famous Tsukishima Kei if you were being nice. Y'know. Mean Beanpole Glasses Guy."

His classmate chews with his mouth open. Kei isn't in the mood to scold him for it. "Mean Beanpole Glasses Guy," he repeats, monotone.

"You're getting it, man," his classmate replies, half a laugh in his voice. Kei doesn't respond, and then his classmate leans forward and smiles conspiratorially, voice lowered. "Listen. I wanted to have lunch with you so I could ask you to do me a favor. Think you could pretend to date me? If we get Ozaki jealous, she'll probably stop giving me the cold shoulder."

Kei wonders, again, why he agreed to spend more time with him than absolutely necessary. A moment passes in silence, Kei not talking while his classmate points raised eyebrows and a suggestive smile his way, and then he breaks out into full-on laughter.

"What a lackluster reaction, dude! But yeah, I'm kidding. I saw it in a movie once. One of my high school exes was obsessed with romcoms. Man, I didn't wanna tell him, but that stuff is dumb as hell," he says, still chuckling to himself. "That kind of thing would never work on her anyway. She's not the jealous type. She's real tight with my ex. Well, they were friends before I started dating either of them, so I dunno if it counts."

Kei doesn't say anything, and his classmate looks at him, then turns his gaze downward. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve.

"What? It's a long story. It's not weird."

For a second, he still won't look at him, and Kei thinks to himself that this might be the first time he saw his classmate genuinely embarrassed. But it doesn't really matter; whatever weird way he met his girlfriend, it isn't Kei's business.

"Anyway, she's not mad at me or anything. At least, uh, not more than usual. She's just leaving me on read 'cause it's midterm season," he says, slumping forward again. He hugs his milkshake glass with both hands, the way people hug warm mugs of hot chocolate or tea. Kei can't imagine he’s finding any comfort in it. "I  _miss_  her, man."

"You're being childish about this. More than I expected from you, anyway. Testing starts in two weeks. Deal with it until then," Kei says. "If you really care about your girlfriend, you should support her ambitions."

"Damn, Tsukishima-kun. You some kinda love guru?" Kei's classmate's hands are off his milkshake now, and he's resting an elbow on the table, chin in palm. He flashes him a half-smirk. "Nah, more like -  _Dear Prudence_. Didn't expect you to give me relationship advice." 

Kei sighs. "It's not exactly a headscratcher. Did you ask me to have lunch with you because you wanted to vent?"

He picks up a french fry, noting how the number on his plate is dwindling. He's halfway through his milkshake, too. And his classmate is the kind of person whose presence gets more grating by the second.

"No. Well, kind of. You're understanding it wrong, man," Kei's classmate says. "I do support my girlfriend. I love her so much. She's so nice and also mean. But she's not ignoring me 'cause  _she_  wants to do good on midterms. She's so smart she gets As  _while_  I'm blowing her phone up with cool puns I made up."

He's smiling now, in a strange genuine way Kei doesn't think he's seen him smile before. Like he’s in a haze.

Kei chews on the french fry in his mouth and swallows. "You asked me to eat lunch with you so you could brag about your girlfriend?" he tries to clarify.

"Yes," Kei's classmate says, rare gravitas in his tone. A moment passes and he realizes what he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Oh, uh. No. You gotta stop interrupting me, dude."

Kei takes another french fry and while he chews, his classmate shoots him an expectant look. He returns it, and his classmate coughs and sits up.

"Alright. The reason she's ignoring me because she wants  _me_  to do well on midterms. She said it's 'for my own good.'" 

He's  _looking_  at Kei now, the joking completely gone from his voice, replaced with a trace of bitterness.

It isn't like Kei's never seen him serious, or even mad - he gets that way when he's talking about the more unproductive volleyball club meetings - but the way the atmosphere of their conversation has shifted is enough to make Kei feel like he's out of his own skin.

"I don't understand," Kei says.

Kei's classmate rubs the back of his neck and doesn't look him in the eye. "It's, uh, a long story. We've been dating since we were at Shiratorizawa, and back when we were taking entrance exams, I dropped the ball. Y'know how you asked how I ended up here? I mean, it's still a pretty good university, but that was kinda why. We were in our honeymoon phase, and I was obsessed with her and, y'know? You  _should_  be obsessed with your girlfriend. But, uh. She got on my back for it."

The gravity of the conversation is pushing on Kei's bones. He can't figure out why his classmate is saying this to him. "She's smart, isn't she? How did she end up here?"

"'Cause our architecture program's fuckin' good, man. I told you this is a good school. She didn't follow me here or anything. You think she did? She's not that type of girl."

Kei didn't think that, but it's strange he brought it up. "Did you follow her here?" Kei asks, and his classmate cringes from across the table.

He stares into his milkshake. "Dude, I told you what happened. Everywhere I got in was basically the same level, so this place was the same as all the other ones, except it had my girlfriend. That doesn't count as 'following.' It's just weighing your pros and cons."

It's like he's convincing himself. His insecurity is glaring, the kind of thing Kei could prod and push at to get him angry in a second, but Kei doesn't do that anymore and it's not like he's any fun when he's angry. "I still can't figure out why you're telling me this."

"It’s…" he starts to say, and then trails off. "Like, I say that shit about missing her, and I do, but I still know two weeks is like, nothing, but. It's kinda like - sometimes I feel like I'd prefer she wasn't talking to me 'cause she's cheating on me, or something.”

He pulls the drink a little closer to his chest, almost knocking a stray french fry off the table.

“She freaked out after entrance exams last year. Like, ‘You’re too smart to have not gotten in to all these schools. What the hell happened?’” He pitches his voice down for his impression, but there’s no humor behind it. “I dunno. I don’t like her thinking she’s holding me back, or something.”

Kei rolls a french fry between his thumb and forefinger, his appetite the last thing on his mind. “Were your grades better before you were together?”

He wrinkles his nose and taps his fingers on the table. “I mean, maybe. But that’s not the point.”

It is the point, if she’s right. But Kei doesn’t think he should say that. “So? It’s the same as before. Two weeks. Instead of overanalyzing how she feels, just do well on your tests, and she won’t be upset,” Kei reasons out. “It’s not complicated.”

For a moment, Kei’s classmate doesn’t react, just keeps staring into his milkshake. A second passes, and he makes eye contact with Kei, flashing him a weak smile.

“Man, you’re right. Didn’t expect you to like giving advice so much, Tsukishima-kun,” he says. “You know, I considered that. But I don’t focus that well when I’m alone, and none of my friends like studying with me ‘cause I’m, uh… ‘clinically incapable of shutting up.’ So.”

All at once, the pieces fall into place. Kei thinks he should have ordered something more expensive. “This was a drawn-out way to ask me to help you study,” he points out.

His classmate shrugs. “You never show up to volleyball club. I figured you’d say no if I just asked.”

He almost definitely would have. “The class you’re afraid of doing bad in is Modern Japanese? It’s only essays.”

“Nah, I just need you, man,” Kei’s classmate says, and he leans over the table to put a hand on his shoulder. Kei shakes it off. “See? You don’t think I’m funny, like, at all. If I started to tell you a cool story, you’d just tell me to shut up. That’s why it’s gotta be you.”

Kei takes a bite of his french fry and swallows. His classmate makes a face.

“C’mon. Don’t you study in the library anyway? I saw you a couple times I was picking Ozaki up. I was gonna say hi, but Ozaki told me not to bug you.”

Kei wants to say no. Not that his classes are even that hard, but his classmate seems to take a lot of pleasure in being annoying, and it’s more exhausting than he wants to deal with. Not to mention that he has work.

But he thinks about what he told him. He thinks about the girl that waits for him outside their classroom, the way her face lights up when she sees him. How Kei can tell she likes his classmate just as much as he likes her despite the fact they’ve never spoken.

He thinks about her thinking about holding him back, her cutting him off because that’s how important it is to her that he does well. He thinks about the kind of person you’d have to be to be able to do something like that.

“Fine,” Kei says.

♞ ♞ ♞  

Kei aces his midterms.

That’s not surprising. Kei always does well. He’s used to getting by without much effort, spends an hour or two every couple of days keeping up with his studies, and has the grades that no one can tell how hard he isn’t working. But he does especially well, this time. The study dates in the library paid off.

And maybe that isn’t the only way they paid off.

Sometime between the first and last time they met in the library, Kei started enjoying it. It wasn’t as if he and his classmate made any real emotional connection, or at least one any more real than the time they ate lunch together in a family restaurant, but Kei found something, in those afternoons.

Silence except for the scratching of pencils on paper, the shuffling of pages, his classmate occasionally looking up to tell Kei a bad joke and Kei telling him to shut up. A feeling he hasn’t had in a long time.

He remembers what was in the air the last time they met up before the testing period started. Beyond that twinge of nervousness or exhaustion – something almost bittersweet.

Strange, feeling like that over someone like his classmate.

“Hey, Tsukishima-kun!” Kei hears, and then he feels a slap on his back that threatens to knock him over. “I was looking for you.”

His classmate is grinning at Kei now, disheveled hair and lopsided glasses betraying the fact that he stayed up studying the night before. “You wear contacts?”

His eyes widen. “Oh, uh, no,” he says, taking his glasses off and shoving them into his pocket. “I got 20/20 vision! Anyway, how was your last test?”

“It was fine,” Kei says. “You can put your glasses back on. I won’t bother you about them if you stop bothering me about mine.”

“Alright,” he says, smiling sheepishly and putting them back on. His prescription is so high it de-magnifies his eyes. “Mine was good, too! I think I did really well. Man, thanks, Tsukishima-kun. I couldn’t have done it without you, you know?”

“No problem,” Kei replies. He scratches the nape of his neck.

“Dude, are you embarrassed?” He nudges Kei in the shoulder. “Didn’t know you could have feelings!”

He’s grinning from ear to ear, and after the moment passes and Kei doesn’t return his comment, he puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Seriously, though, thanks, man. I gotta go get ready ‘cause me and Ozaki are going out on a date in a few, but I wanted to talk to you first. God, I missed her so much! She’s gonna be so happy!”

Kei’s classmate is really smiling now, dazed in thoughts about his girlfriend – Kei remembers having to snap him out of it a couple of times, while he was working on integrals – but after a second, he looks at Kei.

“Hey, what are you gonna do to celebrate?” he asks. “After the last two weeks, it’s kinda hard to imagine you anywhere except the library.”

Kei’s about to reply, then realizes he doesn’t have an answer. He stands there, thinking, but not thinking fast enough, but just as silence threatens to loom over them –

Kei’s classmate’s phone starts to ring.

“Ah, it’s Ozaki! I gotta take this. Thanks again, though, man! I’ll see you in Modern Japanese!”

Just like that, with a wave and a beaming expression shot his way, Kei’s classmate is gone as fast as he came.

♞ ♞ ♞  

The silence on the train back is roaring, in a way it shouldn’t be. When Kei gets out of the station, he calls Yamaguchi, just once.

For the best, Yamaguchi doesn’t answer. Kei shoves his phone back into his pocket and resolves to pretend he didn’t indulge an impulse like that. For no reason. As if Yamaguchi isn’t busy enough.

He’s already a block down on his way back, listening to nothing but scraps of conversation and the sounds of cars passing by him, when the sound of his text tone pervades the unsettling emptiness. At the next crosswalk, Kei takes out his phone.

_sorry tsukki!! yachi dragged me to lunch with her & ito-kun. i'll try to get away soon but i don't know where yachi is??_

_do u really need something? u never call!!! i can leave ito-kun if i have to!!! yachi left me here anyway >:(_

If Kei takes any longer to answer, Yamaguchi will worry himself to death. But Kei can’t blame him for it, if he’s right. Kei never calls him. He’s not even sure what he would have said if Yamaguchi picked up.

Good thing Yamaguchi didn’t pick up, then.

The light across the street changes to walk, but Kei ignores it, moving to the edge of the sidewalk to lean on the streetlight on his corner. A salaryman shoves him in the shoulder. Kei starts typing on his phone.

_it’s fine. it’s not important. enjoy your lunch._

He’s about to put his phone back in his pocket and keep walking, but Yamaguchi replies in a matter of seconds. Kei wasn’t wrong to assume he’d be hovering over his phone. Bad etiquette, if he’s eating with someone.

_are u sure tsukki!! u never call!!_

Something dry escapes Kei’s throat, bordering on a laugh. A woman shoots him a strange look as she passes by, and the light changes back to stop. He starts typing again.

_it’s fine._

_okay!!! if you ever need something u can tell me :^)_

The inside of Kei’s mouth tastes like iron. He closes his eyes, and opens them again.

_i know, yamaguchi._

_:) :) :) ill call you later okay??_

_okay._

When Kei gets home, he heads straight to his room, opens and closes and cleans out the drawers in his desk. After the better part of an hour, the garbage bin in his room on the verge of overflowing, he fishes out a weeks-old receipt crumpled in between stacks of worn index cards.

Kei smooths it out, sits on his bed, and types the address into his phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! and god, sorry we're not at the fake dating part yet. i feel like. you how know that absolute blockbuster stranger than fiction (2006) starring will ferrell and emma thompson was marketed as a quirky comedy but ended up being a tearjerker about the meaning of life. i feel like that, but worse, because that is an excellent movie that you should watch.
> 
> i can promise you though, for real this time, that the next chapter will have fake dating and i know that because i'm writing it currently and it's There.
> 
> on that topic, i was originally supposed to post all three parts of part one staggered by about a week. the bad news is: i have the rest of part one (next two chapters) mapped out in detail, but semester is starting and i don't know if i'll even be able to get the next chapter out soon. i'm a good chunk in, so hopefully i can. please look forward to it, and i'm sorry it's taking so long.
> 
> last thing: if you're able to, however you feel about the fic, please comment on the fic or message me on [tumblr](https://spicymob.tumblr.com) if you prefer that! this fic is really important to me, so any kind of feedback you leave would mean the world.
> 
> but also, thank you already for being here.


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